Thursday, December 16, 2010

Dear Mr. President,

One of your campaign promises was to end the abuse and torture of detainees. Remember that one? I would call your attention to the plight of Pfc. Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army soldier who has not been convicted of any crime but has spent seven months in solitary confinement as a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the first two months in a military jail in Kuwait, the past five months in the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. If any other country did this it would be decried as a violation of basic human rights. It seems pretty obvious what is going on here, an attempt to break him down to say what you want him to say in order to charge Julian Assange with conspiracy, a sickening indication that nothing has changed since your inauguration. This is a continuation of the Bush-era policy of torture and abuse, a disregard for human rights, and a cynical abuse of power: while Pfc. Manning is subjected to seven months of solitary confinement in a Marine brig, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney served not a single day in jail for true criminal activity - the outing of a CIA agent, a federal crime. And even though Mr. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice in that crime, he still didn’t spend a single night in prison because your predecessor commuted his sentence. Talk about a miscarriage of justice! Pfc. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are true patriots and heroes of democracy, bringing to light abuses by the military and the hypocrisy of governments. WikiLeaks informed us what is really going on and without that kind of open information, democracy cannot exist. When governments and the military conduct their business in secret, when they abuse power without consequences, that’s when democracy becomes fascism and totalitarianism. Mr. President, do the right thing and end the incarceration of Pfc. Manning and the persecution of Julian Assange.