KINGDOM OF EVIL

 

BRADLEY MANNING SPEAKS ABOUT HIS CONDITIONS

A VISITOR WATCHES BRADLEY MANNING’S MENTAL HEALTH DETERIORATE
By: Ryan Gallagher March 7, 2011

For over seven months, Manning has been detained in solitary confinement at a maximum security military brig in Virginia.  He has been forced to endure widely condemned conditions and could face the death sentence as a result of charges recently leveled against him. He has yet to receive so much as a preliminary hearing.

House, who was born in Alabama, was brought up in a conservative household and was an Eagle Scout as a boy. He admits that growing up he “never really had any big doubts about the US govt or about the fact that people’s due process may be infringed upon.”

Consequently, the detainment and subsequent treatment of his friend, Manning, came as something of a shock and an awakening.  He helped start the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund and has appeared on television and radio talking about the treatment of the soldier.  It has been a “very jarring” experience, he says.

Last week, as part of a media conference call with Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and former Judge Advocate General Jon Shelburne, House spoke at length about his experiences visiting Manning.  What he described was deeply troubling.

He spoke about how the severe emotional and physical deprivation forced upon Manning is taking its toll, and suggested US authorities are ~ by treating him harshly ~ trying to extract a confession that implicates WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, Julian Assange.

It is important that the full story, as told by House, is in the public domain. In this case, a single quote as chosen by a journalist is simply not enough.

Below is a transcript of House’s story, taken from a phonecall on Thursday 3 March 2011.  A recording of the call can be heard here.

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I’ve been visiting Bradley in the brig [at Quantaco, Virginia] since last September.  He and I met very briefly in Boston early last year, and I went to visit him in September because there were not many people, not many friends, who were willing to do so.

When I first visited him he was a very bright eyed intelligent young man, very full of life. We had many good conversations in September / October. But getting in to November something started to change, almost like a light switch had switched off or something.  I thought that maybe he had just been sleeping right before our meetings or something, or maybe he was just tired because of medication he was on.  

But around late November his inability to really hold conversations the way he used to ~ the bags under his eyes under his eyes that were constant from meeting to meeting and his utter exhaustion ~ was really indicative to me that something was going on.

David Coombs [Bradley’s lawyer] and I talked a little bit in early December, and later that month I went to see Bradley ~ in late December ~ and asked him about his confinement after news had came out via Glenn Greenwald and Salon.com that he was indeed being held in solitary. And I hadn’t really pressed Bradley before that point on his conditions ~ again, I guess my naiveté assuming that the US government wouldn’t stoop to these ends in order to collectively pressure an individual, a young man like Bradley.

But in December I asked him: “What’s it like in here? Are you able to go outdoors? Pentagon spokesperson David Lapan has said you have access to newspapers, you can exercise, you can do calisthenics and running … is any of this true?”

And Bradley kind of didn’t believe that this would be the statement that the Pentagon was releasing ~ that they were either not telling the truth or they’d had a grave misunderstanding of the situation here.

Going in to January. I published that post on Firedoglake where I talked a little bit about my experience with Bradley … his conditions kept getting worse.  There was some physical trembling when I visited him in late January.  As I said in an MSNBC interview, there was a point at which he appeared to be almost catatonic and had very high difficulty carrying on day to day conversation. Tired all the time.  He seemed to be undergoing a very obvious and very extreme decay from his former self.

So for me this has been like watching a really good friend succumb to an illness or something; like watching someone get very sick. And I do not think that this is normal for people being held in confinement.  I think that the conditions he is under, the POI [Prevention of Injury] order which applies a selective pressure to him ~ locked up for 23 hours a day, denied access to regular exercise and denied access to social interaction ~ I feel that this has really weighed on him to a high degree.

I’ve done a little bit of learning on solitary based on this, and as you can imagine it has been a pretty emotional process.  I’ve been trying to find what exactly is going on.  In doing so I found closing arguments from a Guantanamo bay trial by an attorney named David Frakt, who was defending a young man from Afghanistan who was alleged to have killed two US soldiers.

David Frakt, in the closing argument of his client’s trial, said that he did not believe his client had had a fair trial, or could not have been given a fair trial, because he was kept in solitary confinement.

As David Frakt said in his closing argument: the purpose of the solitary confinement was to cause severe emotional devastation in his client ahead of the trial … to make him softer for the trial; to make him sign a confession or a false confession before the trial.  In my opinion, I believe this is exactly what is happening to Bradley Manning.

I believe that the delays in Bradley’s trial taking place, I believe the government’s selective and punitive measures on him in keeping him in solitary which is different from any other detainee in the Quantaco Brig … this is all because the US govt wants to get a confession ~ or a false confession – from Bradley Manning.  

And as we have learned recently, the US government has been unable to link Manning with Julian Assange … and so this pressure, I fear, may continue, as they try to extract a false confession for him.

One last thing about the research I did on solitary is a quote from [US Senator] John McCain about the effects of solitary.  John McCain said: “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

And for those on the call who are interested, I also found the case of a man named Bobby Dellelo, who was held in supermax [at Walpole prison] under similar conditions.  Bobby Dellelo was also kept for 23 hours a day, allowed exercise for one hour, allowed access to visitors and television for an hour.  Bobby Dellelo developed a form of psychosis after six months in these conditions.

This is consistent with EEG studies going back to the 1960s which found abnormalities consistent with brain trauma on people held in solitary confinement for six months or longer.  I do not think that these are facts the US government is unaware of. And I think that Bradley Manning is being punished in this way because the US government wants him to crack ahead of his trial. For that reason I believe that his due process, his right to a fair trial, and certainly his right to a speedy trial, is being infringed upon.

David House can be followed on Twitter here. You can support Bradley Manning by donating to the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund (US) or the Bradley Manning Defense Fund (International).

Cross-posted at openDemocracy

KINGDOM OF EVIL

KINGDOM OF EVIL 

By Arthur Silber
March 5, 2011

A human being can be destroyed in a seemingly infinite number of ways, as history repeatedly demonstrates. Our capacity for cruelty is limitless. It would appear to defy gratification. We are all too familiar with the horrifying varieties of physical violence inflicted on the human body, but there is another method of seeking to destroy those whom we have designated as enemies to our own survival.

In one critical respect, this method is worse than injuries that might be visited on our fragile corporeal form, for while the body may survive intact, the person ~ that is, his mind and soul ~ will never be made whole again.

This method of destruction throws the victim into a nightmare world, one which mocks every effort to comprehend it. Cruelty is presented as compassion and solicitude for the victim's well-being; the words of justification seek to convince those who suffer that their unbearable pain should be accepted for their own good. The victim knows that every utterance of his tormentors is a lie, and the more he attempts to understand why they act so monstrously, the greater his suffering grows.

The victim can never escape these lacerating questions:

How is it possible that human beings could treat another person in this manner?

How can I survive in a world in which such cruelties not only occur with soul-destroying regularity, but in which these cruelties are considered necessary and moral?

If the victim should conclude that he cannot survive in such a world ~ and how can we be surprised that this should be his judgment? ~ his soul will be lost. Even if his body continues to function, he will survive in a world rendered eternally bleak, with terror lurking in every moment. The possibility of joy is extinguished.

This is evil; those who seek to impose this fate on a human being are engaged in evil of an especially monstrous kind.

Read this New York Times story about the latest cruelties inflicted on Bradley Manning, and you will see the operation of these mechanisms. We must remember that Manning is, as the Times story states in its first sentence, the "accused."

As of this date, Manning has been tried for nothing.

As of this date, Manning has been convicted of nothing.

The story informs us that Manning

"will be stripped of his clothing every night as a 'precautionary measure' to prevent him from injuring himself," and that he "will also be required to stand outside his cell naked during a morning inspection." A Marine spokesman says that "the underwear was taken away from him as a precaution to ensure that he did not injure himself."

But as the story goes on to tell us, Manning "has not been elevated to the more restrictive 'suicide watch' conditions." The same Marine spokesman also says that "the new rule on clothing ... would continue indefinitely," and that "he was not allowed to explain what prompted it 'because to discuss the details would be a violation of Manning’s privacy.'”

Thus, according to this spokesman, Manning is subjected to repeated humiliation and degradation ~ for his own good. Moreover, the reason for the repeated humiliation and degradation cannot be provided because of the military's boundless concern for Manning's "privacy" ~ that is, the military also refuses to explain the reason for its cruelty for Manning's own good.

Does the nightmare begin to assume more definite shape before you? 

If you feel assaulted in the depths of your being by this mere recitation of the facts ~ and you should ~ you are experiencing but the faintest shadow of what Manning experiences in captivity.

Manning is, I remind you, only the "accused."

Manning's lawyer, David E. Coombs, tries to cut through this enveloping fog of evil:

“There can be no conceivable justification for requiring a soldier to surrender all his clothing, remain naked in his cell for seven hours, and then stand at attention the subsequent morning,” he wrote. “This treatment is even more degrading considering that Pfc. Manning is being monitored ~ both by direct observation and by video ~ at all times.”

Mr. Coombs contended that stripping his client was medically unjustified.

“If a person is at risk of self-harm, then you get them treatment, you get them to a mental health professional and address the issue ~ you don’t strip them,” he said, adding in a separate telephone interview, “There is no excuse, no justification to having a soldier stand at attention naked. There can be no mental health reason for that.”

Coombs characterized these latest punitive measures "as an unjustified 'humiliation' of his client."  

I would add two comments to that description.

First, forcing a prisoner to remain naked for extended periods of time is not only a barbaric means of humiliating and degrading him: it necessarily includes a very significant element of specifically sexual humiliation and degradation. Add to this unforgivable atrocity the well-known fact that Manning is gay. Especially in the hyper-masculinized world of the military, such sexual humiliation and degradation represents an intentional, additional cruelty. I can only say that the U.S. government and the military of which it is so proud put Torquemada to shame.

Second, these cruelties and the purported "justifications" offered by the military, all in a notably high profile case, definitively put the lie to the propaganda spewed by the U.S. government in response to the torture, including sexual humiliation, revealed at Abu Ghraib: that such incidents were an "aberration" perpetrated by a few "bad apples." (I emphasize that similar torture and humiliation occurred in other locations as well; Abu Ghraib is probably the best-known instance.) They also definitively put the lie to Obama's patently false claim that he has "ended torture," a point I have made repeatedly.

Now we have the U.S. military, with the full support of the U.S. government, openly engaging in repeated acts of cruelty, atrocity, humiliation and degradation ~ acts which the military proclaims will "continue indefinitely" ~ and offering nauseatingly ludicrous justifications which would not convince a minimally healthy ten-year-old child.

No honest observer can regard these actions of the U.S. government and its military as "aberrations": these actions are brazenly offered as U.S. government policy.

These actions also constitute torture. I first offered this description of torture in December 2005, and I stand by it today:

Torture is the deliberate infliction of unbearable agony on a human being ~ a human being who is intentionally kept alive precisely so that he will suffer still more and for a longer period of time ~ for no justifiable reason.

(Descriptions of the articles in my series, "On Torture," will be found here.)

I therefore repeat what I said above:

This is evil; those who seek to impose this fate on a human being are engaged in evil of an especially monstrous kind.

This is also the U.S. government and its military.

Mark it well.

Several additional issues require further commentary. In particular: we must beware falling into the trap of selective outrage.

The horrifying case of Bradley Manning is an especially high profile one, but he is hardly the only victim of even this particular form of the U.S. government's monstrousness.

And the cruelties visited upon Manning ~ a man who, I emphasize again, has not yet been tried and convicted of even a single crime ~ necessarily raise this question: What is the source of the rage which the U.S. government directs at this man?

The answer will not be found in most of the commentary on this awful case.