Bradley Manning: Torture or Ice Cream?

In a chariot, eating ice cream, making out with celebrities all day, everyday.

By Mike Knish

Bradley Manning should ride in chariots, eat ice cream, and make out with his favorite celebrities all day, everyday. Not in solitary confinement being goddamn tortured. If you don’t know who he is, let me do my best to explain what he has done.
 
Bradley Manning is a Private First Class for the U.S. Army. He served in Iraq where his role was an intelligence analyst. In May of 2010, Bradley allegedly began IM-ing and emailing a hacker named Adrian Lamo, and it was during these conversations that Bradley allegedly claimed to have released classified information to a "white-haired aussie." Lamo gave up the logs to the FBI and Manning was arrested shortly thereafter.

The most famous file that Bradley is alleged to have leaked is a video of an attack from an Apache helicopter in which US soldiers murder Iraqi civilians from a helicopter. One of the civilians they shoot later tries to drag his bullet-littered body away, and the helicopter fires on him again. Then after a short while, a man driving his 2 kids to school in a van pulls to the side of the road to pick up the dead and wounded, and then the fucking helicopter fires on the van. There were goddamn kids in the van. The children were shot but not killed, but their dad was killed in the gunfire. In total 12 civilians were killed in cold blood. If you haven’t watched this video yet, please watch it. Here’s a link with a shortened and full version, both with subtitles.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Bradley Manning had access to this video, watched it, and allegedly decided that the world needed to see it. When Lamo asked him why he didn’t sell the info to China or Russia, he is claimed to have said "it belongs in the public domain." He later said that people need to see the files in order to make informed decisions. Bradley knew that democracy doesn’t mean anything if such critical information is kept secret.
 
So Bradley was arrested at the end of last May, and has been in maximum security solitary confinement. He is kept in a 6’x12′ cell with a drinking fountain, toilet, and a pad for 23 hours a day. During the one hour he is let out, he walks in a figure 8 in chains and escorted by two guards, and as soon as he stops moving, he’s returned to his cell. This is torture. This has been known for over a century to have the same short- and long-term psychological effects as physical torture. His detention conditions have been decried by Amnesty International, and the only two people allowed to visit him (sometimes), a friend and his lawyer.
 
You could talk forever about how fucking disgusting it is to illegally occupy a country, murder its civilians, and then cover it up, or how Wikileaks is doing amazing, important work and should be celebrated, but that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because I learned last week that he has been charged with 22 crimes, the most serious of which is "aiding the enemy" which could potentially carry a death sentence.

http://www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41876046/ns/us_news-security/

A motherfucking death sentence.
 
The emotions I feel around this are so overwhelming, I seriously don’t know what to do. When I really process the layers of this matter, I get so mad I want to cry. Bradley Manning is a fucking saint for having the courage to leak this video, let alone the trove of files that further demonstrated how awful and murderous the war in Iraq has been.
 
We cannot let this happen. I’m absolutely going to Virginia next weekend, let alone when this moves to trial. If you have any serious ideas about how to prevent his execution, or even further detention, we need to talk about it. So much noise needs to be made around this.