Bradley Manning's 1,000th Day Without a Trial

Dear Mr. President,
Today is Bradley Manning’s 1,0000^th day of incarceration without a trial. It has been postponed several times already and is now scheduled to start on June 3. That’s 3 years, one month and one week from the time of his arrest on May 26, 2010. Accused of downloading and turning over classified documents to WikiLeaks, he was held in an 8 by 8 cage in Kuwait until July 10, 2010 when he was flown to Quantico, Virginia where he was put in the Marine brig in isolation under “Prevention of Injury” watch for 9 months; even Navy psychiatrists said that was unwarranted. At a press conference on March 11, 2011, you told the American public that you had been assured by the Pentagon that Manning’s treatment was “appropriate and met our basic standards”—whatever that means—but 11 months later, on February 19, 2012, after a 14-month investigation, the UN special rapporteur on torture sent his annual report of human rights abuses around the world to the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council. In it, he formally accused the U.S. government of “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of Bradley Manning. (If you want to read about this story, you have to go to a foreign press like The Guardian; the American media didn’t bother to cover it.) So here we are a year later and Bradley Manning is still in prison, still untried, but no longer in the torturous conditions of the Quantico Marine Brig only because of public outcry. (I read that the Quantico Marine Brig is being de-commissioned because of its notoriety.) I went to a rally today commemorating Bradley Manning’s 1,000^th day of incarceration. Not a lot of us, but enough to keep the conscience of justice alive. There were rallies in 70 cities here and abroad, a good sign. One of the speakers said that when he asked Bradley what he feared most, Manning immediately replied, “That all the information released will be forgotten in a few days.” This is real bravery, Mr. President, true heroism, authentic patriotism. He knew the consequences of his actions and he chose to listen to his moral center. He killed no one, he tortured no one, and in the final analysis, he harmed no one. None of your torturers or assassins, none of the war criminals of the past administration or the present one have ever served a day in prison, only the whistleblowers, the true defenders of democracy have. You guaranteed, indeed, promoted this inverted system of justice. It is your legacy, it will be your curse. Free Bradley Manning!

Bradley Manning. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP