Reporters Now Mocking US Bogus 'Transparency' On Human Rights Issues on PFC B. Manning

Good point, but Obama seems to be perfectly fine with torturing U.S. soldiers, and unfortunately for Manning -- he is not an oil rich country.

I don't know. Do you? I'm at a total loss.

One benefit of blogging/venting is just getting the word out. I guess that's the first step. The more people who know, the more can be done... but I don't know what can be done about anything I vent about. I wish I did. The Democrats aren't listening to liberals because they don't have to. All they need to do is scare liberals into voting against the more evil alternative. We have to stop voting for Democrats who aren't even close to liberal. That's my small part. I'm not going to vote for Obama. This Manning situation is only one reason.

I agree about Obama, but we'll see. I've entertained false hopes too often to think he'll turn around. The hope/change thing turns out to only be flatulent campaign slogans. For me, voting for Obama at this point would be a dishonest and dishonorable thing to do.

Blogging/venting does not much get the word out. Here at current, most folks are like-minded to a great extent, though there's a lot of name calling here and there. What's important is to act. I've joined my local legislative district Democratic organization and go to the meetings, and while I speak my mind I mind my manners.

Activists who got coordinated and did this sort of thing got George McGovern nominated in '72, but of course at the time he was unelectable vs. Nixon. But we all know how Nixon turned out. Perhaps now a sane and intelligent candidate can win. It could have happened in 2008, but we were all blindsided by Obama turning out to be a Neocon in sheep's clothing.

So there's one possibility. Find out when your local Democratic legislative district meets and go. Sign up and pay your dues - it's cheap - and vote. Do it. Tell everyone you know to do it.

Of course, there's always pitchforks, torches, and paving cobbles, but that's when all else fails. Meanwhile, get out of dollars and make sure you know where the exits are.

May violate his human rights? May? The DoD is hoping this guy loses it, if he hasn't already. What Medieval torturers did to the body, the military is doing to this boys mind. There is NO justification for this and the military's sole motivation is sadistic revenge because he made them look bad.

Mark, look at Manning's right eye (the one on the left) in the "after" picture. There's been some kind of damage to make the one eyelid droop like that.

It could be brain damage, or a localized nerve damage. But something significant has been done to him and, looking at his appearance, I don't think it's a botox injection gone bad.

He looks drugged to me.

Thank you for the picture. It says a million words.

Have you read Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival?" There's an audio version I listened to in the car and Chomsky, in the introduction, articulates the revulsion the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world feels towards the US. It's frightening.

My overseas friends are polite, but often enough the conversation has turned to what is wrong back here. Most appalling to them is that we routinely resort to torture, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, and sometimes torture people to death. These people know that the US Constitution makes adherence to treaties the Senate ratifies the law of the land - this makes us a renegate State in their eyes.

Has anyone questioned Obama directly about this young man? I haven't read any of his comments regarding him.

OBL couldn't have done it by himself...he needed the help of two U.S. presidents to do it.

The url posted is to Democratic Underground. That is not the source of the article. The source of the article, according to the url in the post at DU, is WashingtonPost. When one clicks on the url posted in the DU article, the web page is invalid ("article not found").

The posts from DU folder the url goes to are dated 12/22/2010--that is really quite old for such a popular issue..

A search at the WP website for "Bradley Manning" only has articles back to 1/21/2011.

If one wanted to spend more time than I have already spent trying to verify your post, one could do an internet search for -- what? There really isn't anything in your post to even do a google search with--unless you want to wade through 150,000 articles cued for "Bradley Manning" and "Lee," there is simply no way to trace back the source you provided.

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This is just my opinion, here, so take it for what it is worth.

Democratic Underground is probably, outside of the FreeRepublic (freeper), one of the most heavily censored message-board system I have encountered. They allow their moderators free run, with the general censorship mantra being "no anti-Democratic-Party posts allowed."

During election season, especially, the censorship "policy" appears to be designed and implemented from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

I will click on a url leading to DU, but would never use it as a source because:

1. It is so heavily censored--what you are promulgating is DU's management and moderators' presentation of what they want the Democratic Party online community to appear to the world--anything posted there has to be verified before it can believed.

2. It is so heavily censored that often the posts referenced are gone by the time another poster clicks on the url.

In this case, simply going to the WP article would have ID'd the problem with the WP url. Then, when the invalid WP page was found, doing a search would probably have cued to to the article being so old, it wasn't even coming up on a WP search.

Okay, that's it. As I said, this is just my opinion...your mileage may vary.