Reply #25: And if you are a friend of Mannings, or you visit him, you will be

[sabrina 1]

harassed by the U.S. government.

Government harassing and intimidating Bradley Manning supporters

That campaign of intimidation is now clearly spreading to supporters of Bradley Manning. Last Wednesday, November 3, David House, a 23-year-old researcher who works at MIT, was returning to the U.S. from a short vacation with his girlfriend in Mexico, and was subjected to similar and even worse treatment. House's crime: he did work in helping set up the Bradley Manning Support Network, an organization created to raise money for Manning's legal defense fund, and he has now visited Manning three times in Quantico, Virginia, where the accused WikiLeaks leaker is currently being detained (all those visits are fully monitored by government agents). Like Appelbaum, House has never been accused of any crime, never been advised that he's under investigation, and was never told by any federal agents that he's suspected of any wrongdoing at all.

As for the guards being 'professional', please, so were the guards at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. I don't think we can make that claim anymore since we do not prosecute torturers in this country, we can assume that they have nothing to fear, and may even in fact be given medals of freedom.

I really wish I did not have to see people defending this kind of thing on democratic boards. I never saw this kind of defense of it when Bush was president.

This soldier saw some very nasty things being done by his government when he was in Iraq. He tried to get his concerns addressed. He took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution. What should a soldier do when no one will listen to him? This is what Whistle-blowing is about. And although this administration appears to be making a mockery of the protection of whistle-blowers, we still have laws that do protect them.

They are torturing this soldier. They have no crime to charge Wikileaks with as they have been told now by many legal experts. They are attempting to get a 'confession' from Manning to implicate Assange in some kind of crime. Although I can't image what. Even if they met, journalists do meet with sources.

This treatment is what we would expect from the former Soviet Union. I don't know why we keep insisting that we are a democracy. It would be easier to accept the criminal behavior of our government if we just dropped the pretense. The Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are crimes of great magnitude. Manning is a hero, no matter what they do to him, or extract from him by torture. They are so scared of having their crimes exposed for the world to see by a news organization they have no control over.