I can’t believe we are still debating this:
The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier’s arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez writes.
Hell, almost no one even questions whether or not it was abuse anymore, it so clearly was. At best, even from the most soulless, we’ll get “He should have known better to do that while in the military” or from the mindless Obama defenders we’ll hear “If they didn’t keep him naked and he hurt himself, then they’d blame Obama.” But no one seriously claims what they did was appropriate, humane, or non-abusive. They broke all of their policies, rejected advice from doctors, and went ahead and did whatever they wanted to him.
Why? Because he embarrassed them, and they wanted some payback.
Because they wanted to pressure him to turn on others (mainly Assange).
Because he wasn’t your typical soldier, and clearly had some issues.
And finally, like all sadists, they did it because they could.