Paul Craig Roberts wrote, March 13, 2011:

In his marvelous book, The Emotional Lives Of Animals, Marc Bekoff describes the devastating impact on animals of being kept in small cages. US soldier Bradley Manning has been kept illegally in an even smaller cage for eight months with no end in sight. At his press conference on March 11, one reporter found the courage to ask President Obama about the conditions of Manning’s confinement. The great and noble president of the united states replied that he had asked the Pentagon and was assured that the conditions of Manning’s confinement “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.” Only a George Orwell could do justice to an american president who thinks that keeping a US soldier in conditions worst than those that drive caged animals insane is “appropriate.”

Our Time of Universal Deceit Needs An Orwell
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23688

I’m wondering: might Bradley Manning become America’s Mohamed Bouazizi? The Pentagon says it’s afraid Pfc. Manning might inflict “self-injury,” and is therefore keeping him in isolation. Farfetched as it is, the Pentagon’s fear must be that a Bradley Manning suicide would trigger a popular eruption of citizens outraged that this young soldier, whose only ‘crime’ is his embarrassment of United States officials, would be brought to suicide by his government’s actions.

When P.J. Crowley, the state department spokesman, was forced to resign for telling the world that Pentagon treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning in military detention has been “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid,” he stated:

The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.

Crowley’s firing is further evidence that the “laws and values” of the Obama administration continue the policies and practices of the prior administration, and that Obama will also defend those policies when given an opportunity to change them.

Make no mistake: the Obama administration wants to have it both ways: to say the release of secret cables “critically impact” national security; and at the same time to say that the release of secret cables is not such a big deal. Obama is either wholly complicit in Pfc. Manning’s torture by isolation and confinement, or he is wholly captive to rogue elements of the government detaining Private Manning. Either way, there is no change we can believe in.