Why is it so hard for the public at large to learn how Bradley Manning is being treated? You won’t hear a straight answer from Mark Toner, spokesman for Barack Obama’s State Department.
Here’s a translation for all you are hearing: “Because we are torturing Bradley Manning and we don’t want people outside the military prison to know about it.”
"Professor Benkler, echoing the point that I've repeatedly emphasized as I believe it to be the most important one, said "Manning's conditions were being used 'as a warning to future whistleblowers'." Indeed, Manning's treatment lacks even a pretense of justification; it — just like the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistle-blowers — is clearly meant to threaten and intimidate future individuals of conscience who, like Manning, might consider exposing government deceit, corruption and illegality: one of the few remaining avenues for learning what the Government does.
Aside from what conduct like this reveals about Obama, it also severely undermines the ability of the U.S. to exercise any shred of moral leadership in the world."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald…