Pentagon Misleads Commander In Chief

"With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are." - Barack Obama, White House Press Conference, March 10, 2011.

On Tuesday (1/8/2013), the military judge presiding over Manning's court-martial found, as the Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports, "that he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention" and is thus entitled to a reduction of his sentence if he is found guilty. Pilkington notes:

[The military judge's] ruling was made under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that protects prisoners awaiting trial from punishment on grounds that they are innocent until proven guilty. The recognition that some degree of pre-trial punishment did occur during the nine months that the soldier was held in Quantico marks a legal victory for the defence in that it supports Manning's long-held complaint that he was singled out by the US government for excessively harsh treatment.

 

Do you think President Obama will now go back to the Pentagon person he spoke with in 2011 and angrily demand to know why he was lied to?