Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon, the UN will be launching an investigation into the treatment of Bradley Manning, the Private First Class of the US Army who is being charged with crimes surrounding the leaking of confidential documents to WikiLeaks. Greenwald has done an excellent job reporting on WikiLeaks and on Manning's treatment, and I encourage everybody to read about it if you haven't already.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of WikiLeaks, I think we should all be able to agree that holding a US citizen -- who has not been convicted of any crime and poses no risk to himself or others -- in solitary confinement before he is even tried deeply conflicts with our nation's claimed values. The fact that the objective of this treatment appears to be coercing Manning to make incriminating statements against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange makes it all the more disgusting.
While Manning's treatment may not meet the legal definition of "torture" (unlike waterboarding, which clearly does), it's not far from it, and it looks like it's being used toward similar ends as those to attempt to justify torture.
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