The corrosive, solitary confinement being inflicted upon PFC Bradley Manning in the Quantico, Va., brig is no exceptional torture devised exclusively for him. Across the length and breadth of the Great American Prison State, the world’s largest, with its 2.4-million captives stuffed into 5,000 overcrowded lock-ups, some 25,000 other inmates are suffering a like fate of sadistic isolation in so-called supermax prisons, where they are being systematically reduced to veritable human vegetables.

Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking information to Wikileaks.

Not surprisingly, Manning is attracting global attention to the Pentagon’s sadism. If anyone did not believe the Pentagon’s ruthless treatment of Iraqi prisoners when the Abu Ghraib torture photos were released, they believe it now that it is torturing one of its own. In this assault upon the body and mind of a 23-year-old American soldier, all of the Pentagon’s arrogance and clumsiness is revealed to the world. Perhaps not even the French military – when its frame-up on treason charges of Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus was exposed – attracted to itself the global searchlights of opprobrium now bathing the walls of a Marine Corps brig at Quantico.

The kind of isolation torture Manning is enduring in recent years has spread itself quietly throughout U.S. correctional facilities like a deadly gangrene. According to one reliable report, by 2003 between five and eight percent of the prison populations of Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia were rotting in isolation. In some federal prisons the cells are referred to euphemistically as “Communications Management Units” and are, incidentally, “disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners,” according to an American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) law suit challenging them. In another suit, the ACLU has accused the Texas Youth Commission of “throwing children (girls) into cold, bare solitary confinement cells…” and told the TYC bluntly its “reliance on solitary confinement has to stop.”

Dr. Stuart Grassian, a veteran of 25 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, wrote in a law school journal of his interviews with prisoners in solitary. He said almost a third of them experienced impaired brain function. They “described hearing voices, often in whispers, often saying frightening things to them.” In an article published in “The Long Term View” magazine of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Grassian wrote that about a third succumbed to “acute psychotic, confusional states” in which they saw objects “becoming larger and smaller, seeming to ‘melt’ or change form.” And this was only one of the syndromes experienced.

In a related article published in the same issue (Volume 7, No. 2), Dr. Atul Gawande of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, cited the findings of psychology professor Craig Haney of the University of California at Santa Cruz on isolation’s impact. Some inmates in the Pelican Bay supermax, Haney found, even after just months of isolation, suffered “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result…In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving, becoming essentially catatonic.” This, of course, is what the Pentagon apparently seeks to inflict on Manning. In June, 2006, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons recommended ending long-term isolation of prisoners but the so-called “House of War” wasn’t listening.

In the 2008 presidential race, Gawande wrote, both Obama and McCain came out firmly for banning torture and closing Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds have been held in years-long isolation, yet neither “addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture.” McCain spent two of his five years as a POW in Viet Nam in solitary, later stating: “It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

The U.S. willingness to hold prisoners in isolation for years “made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world,” Gawande wrote, adding, “In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, our (generation) has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement – on our own people, in our own communities, in a supermax prison…”

“This conduct (solitary confinement) by the U.S. Federal and State governments constitutes torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which are treaties to which the United States is a contracting party,” says international legal authority Francis Boyle, professor of the subject at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

Boyle believes, “As citizens of America and human beings in the world, we must do all in our power to terminate such illegal and criminal practices that are daily perpetrated by our own governmental institutions in our name against our fellow citizens and human beings.” Boyle is the author of “Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law”(Amazon).

Those supporting Manning need to recognize he is an icon for the bizarre, systemic destruction of tens of thousands of other human beings locked away in perpetual silence by their tormentors, often for mere infractions of prison rules, without the review of any judge or jury. As the ACLU told the TYC, this must be stopped.

What action will you take in your community to put an end to it?

The three-week trial made it sound like Siddiqui, who U.S. authorities had previously described as an al-Qaida sympathizer, had suddenly appeared in Afghanistan where she was arrested and then interrogated by Afghan and U.S. officials. (It was during that interrogation that Siddiqui allegedly staged her attack using a rifle a U.S. officer had left unattended in the room.)

The truth is Siddiqui had been “disappeared” in Pakistan by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2003 (She likely was picked up because U.S. intelligence agencies were saying she had terrorist links).

A report in the Pakistani press said that Siddiqui and her kids, then 7, 5, and 6 months old, had been seen being detained by Pakistani authorities. Days later, a spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed that she was in custody and being interrogated. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials apparently changed their minds, saying it was unlikely she was being held.

Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, has said that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again.

Interestingly enough, on July 7, 2008, only a few weeks before Siddiqui’s arrest in Afghanistan, Yvonne Ridley, an award-winning British journalist and patron of Cage Prisoners, a human rights organization, had sparked an uproar by calling a press conference in Islamabad to demand that the United States hand over an unidentified female prisoner being held at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

Ridley said the woman, whom she called the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” had been held in solitary confinement for years. And while no one knew for sure the identity of that prisoner, Ridley said she thought it was Siddiqui. Several former U.S. captives have also reported that a female prisoner, known only as prisoner 650, was being held in Bagram. And according to news reports, the former captives said she had lost her sanity, and cried all the time.

Ridley had written previously about “Prisoner 650″ and her four-year ordeal of torture and repeated rapes, saying that her cries had prompted the male prisoners to go on a hunger strike. And, at the Islamabad press conference, Ridley said she called her a “Gray Lady” because she was almost a “ghost, a specter whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her.”

At her trial in New York, Siddiqui said she had been tortured and held in a secret prison before her detention. AP reported that she said charges that she attacked U.S. personnel who wanted to interrogate her were “crazy.” “It’s just ridiculous,” Siddiqui told the court.

And it is ridiculous. More likely this woman has been charged, and now convicted, of these crimes to cover up years of U.S. torture. The United States will never regain a position of trust in the world as long as a miscarriage of justice like this is unchallenged and uncorrected.

Amnesty reports that at least 1,000 men and women are now on death row in Iraq, a country that has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. Amnesty released the following appeal in late August:

“At least nine women under sentence of death in Iraq are now in imminent danger of execution, as Iraq’s Presidential Council has ratified their death sentences. Three other women have been executed since early June.

The authorities have transferred a number of women to the 5th section of Baghdad’s al-Kadhimiya Prison, which is where condemned prisoners are held immediately before they are executed…

One of the women now in imminent danger, Samar Saed Abdullah, was sentenced to death in August 2005 for the murder of her uncle, his wife

Photo of Samar Saed Abdullah provided to CNN by her family

In an article written in September by CNN.com’s Arwa Damon, Samar Saed Abdullah describes her confession:

“They kept beating me, and they told me, ‘Say whatever we want you to say, and do not say anything else, and say yes, I was an accomplice to this crime.’ Although I had nothing to do with it. Finally, they made me sign a blank piece of paper, and they filled it out afterwards.”

An Iraqi organization, the Women’s Will Association, is trying to build an international coalition to put pressure on the Iraqi government to stop the executions immediately. This group and others suggest sending appeals immediately to representatives in Congress and to people and organizations like these:

Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights,
commissioner@coe.int

(United Nations) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,
civilsocietyunit@ohchr.org

Amnesty has suggested that urgent appeals be sent via the Iraqi embassy or diplomatic representative in your country, asking them to forward your appeals to Iraqi President Jalal Talabai.

Also, it can’t hurt to let the White House know what you think:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor wrote:

“After two years of wrangling to head off a case that centered around the Bush administration’s practice of abducting alleged terrorists abroad and sending them to friendly third states for interrogation, Italian prosecutors won a stunning victory on Wednesday, when 23 US intelligence agents were convicted in absentia by a Milan court for kidnapping.

“The practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ became common for the CIA after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, with hundreds of alleged militants abducted in Europe and Central Asia and elsewhere, and delivered to states like Algeria, Egypt, and Syria, where torture is often used against presumed enemies of the state. The US says it received assurances that torture would not be used. But the practice has been especially controversial in Europe, where roughly 100 Muslim men have been abducted.

“In a ruling that could damage US-Italian relations, Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, was handed an eight-year sentence, and the 22 others — all believed to have been CIA employees or contractors — were given five-year sentences for the 2003 abduction from a Milan street of Muslim cleric Hassan Moustafa Osama Nasr. The convicted Americans were also ordered to pay Mr. Nasr and his wife $2 million. It was the first conviction for a rendition case. None of the men are in Italy, and their whereabouts have not been disclosed.”

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, Daniel Tencer writing for the alternative news site, “The Raw Story,” describes the experience of Britain’s former ambassador in Uzbekistan with the CIA rendition program in that totalitarian country:

“The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

“Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“‘I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,’ he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by The Real News Network. ‘I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.’”

Murray was dismissed as ambassador in 2004 after he documented and raised questions to his superiors about the CIA rendition program in Uzbekistan, the horrific torture taking place in prisons there and that the United States and Britain were relying on that torture to provide them information on suspected terrorists.

The British government first tried to convict Murray of 18 charges, ranging from issuing visas in exchange for sex to driving a car down a flight of stairs. He was cleared of all the charges but not before the details were leaked to the press. With his 20-year career with the British Foreign Service over, Murray continued to work to expose and end torture.

These two news items show how important it is that the U.S. investigation of torture and other war crimes that involve CIA officials and former White House officials be allowed to continue. It will likely be a very ugly can of worms, but it’s time we took a look.

Recently, seven CIA directors, including three who are subjects of the probe, asked the president to reign in the attorney general, telling Obama that, “public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help Al-Qaida elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations.”

Obama has said that no one is above the law, and it is obvious that the CIA is worried about the very real prospects that several top officials may face war crimes charges if this investigation continues.

But in order for the United States to regain the respect and cooperation of the international community and for Americans to regain a sense of self-respect, the investigation has to be carried out and if officials are charged with war crimes, they must be put on trial.

ConsortiumNews.com has all the sordid details about the CIA directors and the letter to Obama in an article by Ray McGovern. He also writes about the involvement of government officials leading all the way up to former president George W. Bush.

McGovern should know what he is talking about. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, working under nine CIA directors and seven presidents. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.