Friday, March 11, 2011



Bradley Manning gets the Abu Ghraib treatment

Six years ago, US guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were found to be torturing prisoners. One of their favourite techniques was using forced nudity as a psychological torture technique. The US military dismissed them as "a few bad apples".

Today, the US military is holding Bradley Manning - the man accused of leaking State Department cables to Wikileaks - in a maximum security brig pending trial. How is he treated? He's been forced to strip naked every night, apparently as punishment for his actions (despite the fact that he is still awaiting trial) and because people are protesting for his freedom. So, is Quantico full of "bad apples" too, or should we take the official approval and support of this as evidence of a policy of psychological torture?