Bradley Manning Forced to Strip - News

Yes, today we discussed the 22 new charges that have been filed against Bradley Manic, the Army Private Accuses of leaking documents to WikiLeaks. Now one of those was a capital offense of eating the enemy. And now we have information, the both on Wednesday and Thursday, Manning was forced to strip naked, remained that way for seven hours, both days. His clothes were returned to him until the following morning after he was required to stand and make it outside of his cell during an inspection. This is something that the military isn't denying. In fact, they acknowledged it, but wouldn't give any reason as to why Manning was subject to this type of treatment and at this type of humiliation. A marine spokesman said that he couldn't explain it without violating the detainees' privacy. And the New York Times is now reporting the quannico who said that Manning will be stripped searched every night as a precautionary measure to prevent self-injury. Now remember this. Bradley Manning has not been convicted of any crime. Under our legal system, he is innocent until proven guilty. So I kind of just said that he poses no danger to himself. So what could possibly justify this kind of treatment? And how does it reflect on our military and on our government? Joining me to discuss it is Jack Rice, former CIA Special Agent and Criminal Defense Attorney, Jack, thanks so much for joining us. Now let's start with the idea that Bradley Manning, first of all, has been in custody for 10 months now. He's been held in solitary confinement. He's allowed out for one hour out of 23 hours or 24 hours a day. And now he's being told that he might have to strip naked every single day. To you, does that constitute torture? Well, of course it does. I mean, if we take a look at exactly what it is they're doing and try to understand why. Now if we look at the facts behind this and we say, okay, we think he's going to try to commit suicide. Oh, we think there's contraband and, oh, oh, oh, oh, guess what? There's nothing out there that we've seen so far that would lead us to believe that. And yet that seems to be some sort of justification because otherwise why would you do this? Why would you hold him in isolation for 23 hours a day? But for essentially abuse trying to crush any will that may be there, trying to motivate him to do certain things. When in fact you have no right to do that, but apparently nobody cares or at least not the powerful people. But the military is trying to claim that well, they have every right to do that because they're the military and these are military guidelines. So is this really normal? No, it's not. See, that's the thing that's important here is that's what we see from the DOD when it comes to this. They say we can do just about whatever we want because these are the guidelines, but they still have to have justification. They still have to have some sort of articulateable reason, not just, well, we're in the mood to do this because it's manning. We want to break this guy. You need more than that and they've been very, very unwilling to provide this before. Actually, I think what is the most telling here has nothing to do with what it is that he is involved in in terms of maybe trying to hurt himself or or contraband. It's what the DOD spokesman said just a matter of hours ago when he said, well, the reason some of this is happening is because of the seriousness of the charges because of national security. Because of the length of the potential sentence, guess what? That's what this is tied to and that is what makes this particularly outrageous because it highlights the motivation behind what the DOD is doing to Mr Manning. And also the justice department has so far been saying that they haven't no way been able to tie manning to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. It makes sense here that there's so desperately trying to put this criminal case together that they would have to resort to these or think they have to resort to these tactics to really try. To break him, but you know, you mentioned one thing of the Pentagon spokesman said, I think that they've been really failing with their entire media message here. First, they didn't really want to talk about Bradley Manning yesterday, Jeff Morel went on TV and basically lied about Bradley Manning's condition and his treatment and said that he had visited him, which was not true. And now they're saying that they will admit that he was being forced to strip, but they can't tell us why because they fear that that violates Bradley Manning's privacy. I can't put two and two together here. And what does that what the hell is that supposed to mean? You're not the only one and that's really the problem is you can't put two and two together here. The inconsistencies are so clear. If you just look at the statements that are coming out of the DOD themselves, they're fighting themselves over the messions that they're trying to give. And that is part of this. But you know, here's a perfect example. They come up with 22 new charges, right? So they have all of these charges and the number one charge that you have here that could potentially put him to death. The death is aiding the enemy. And yet what's curious about that is they can't even articulate which enemy they're talking about. I mean, who are the ones who are aiding them if they can't tie him to WikiLeaks. Where is this coming from? How is this getting to anybody? How do they clarify that? But you know what? There's nothing out there. That's that two and two not meeting again. Yeah, we looked into this yesterday on our program as well. And the military is denying that WikiLeaks is the official enemy here. But what they're saying is that by putting this information out into the open, then Bradley Manning may be helping facilitate this information getting into the hands of enemies such as Al Qaeda, you know, or the Taliban. But in with that argument, can't you also say that any newspaper, the New York Times, the Guardian that published this information is also guilty there? Absolutely. I think that's exactly clear. But you know what? And I've seen this very directly in my own experience. I've been embedded with the US military in Kosovo. I've been with them multiple times in Iraq, Afghanistan and other part of the places around the world. So I've seen this quantum of multiple times as well. And I think that's the reason why I'm saying this is that what the US military, what the DOD is trying to do is they're trying to articulate a very clear message. And they want to control that message. And if anybody comes out with something that's inconsistent with that message, then they will go after them. They have done that in this case. I've seen where they're trying to control it when I've been in the field before in Afghanistan last time. So this isn't shocking to me. The problem is, is there's too many moving parts inside the Pentagon right now. They can't sit down at one table and say, okay, this is how they're going to be. Okay, this is how we're going to play everybody who's watching this. And so you get all of these strange answers. Everybody claiming that they're telling the truth. When in fact, it's clear that a lot of them are not. What about the reaction from the people at this point? You could say that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the Guantanamo Bay facility in general has sparked a lot of outrage internationally and amongst many Americans. Why are we hearing the same thing about rally manning treatment? Because I think a lot of people don't give a damn. I mean, I think what happens is there are a lot of people who want to listen to what the government says and what the Pentagon says and simply say that it is true. That what they're saying must be true because they don't want to look at the alternative. And that's really the sad part about this. We have seen this again and again and again where the government has told us one thing, when in fact, the rest of the story has had to come out to prove them wrong. But by that time they've moved on. Well, Jack, want to thank you very much for joining us. And of course, we'll see how history treats Bradley Manning who knows. Maybe decades from now, he'll be looked at as the new Daniel Ellsberg who these days is completely had as image rehab and is looked upon as a hero, but only time will tell. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.