[Peace-discuss] Barack Obama lied (quelle surprise)

[C. G. Estabrook]

Lies my Obama told me

"I don't want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are 
continually pushing me out of my comfort zone."
-- Barack Obama, June 18, 2008.

Barack Obama lied.

Again.

He lied because somebody -- a good man, a decent man, and a respected spokesman 
for the U.S. State Department -- pushed Obama out of his comfort zone this week. 
And so what happened? -- the Obama administration forced him out of his job. 
Apparently Obama does just want to have people who agree with him. Imagine that.

Truth be told (heh), the biggest outrage in this story actually is not the 
firing of the State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley. It's the episode that 
Crowley spoke out about -- the bizarre and immoral treatment of alleged 
Wikileaks leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning, who according to multiple news accounts 
is being held under conditions that make Gitmo look look like a halfway house 
for inside traders.

It started out like this:

Made to endure strict conditions under a prevention of injury order against the 
advice of military psychiatrists, he is treated like no other prisoner at the 
250-capacity Quantico Brig detention facility in Virginia. Despite that he is 
yet to be convicted of any crime, for the past 218 consecutive days he has been 
made to live in a cell 6ft wide and 12ft long, without contact with any other 
detainees. He is not allowed to exercise or have personal effects in his cell, 
and for the one hour each day he is allowed free from his windowless cell he is 
taken to an empty room where he is allowed to walk, but not run.

One of the few people to have visited Manning, David House, spoke yesterday of 
how he had witnessed his friend go from a "bright-eyed intelligent young man" to 
someone who at times has appeared "catatonic" with "very high difficulty 
carrying on day to day conversation".

And it got worse:

Military jailers are forcing Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old soldier accused of 
passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.org, to strip naked in his cell at 
night and sleep without clothing, a requirement his lawyer says was imposed 
after Manning made a "sarcastic quip" about his confinement.

So basically the administration that ran on a platform of ending torture of 
suspected al-Qaeda terrorists and closing Guantanamo has not only not closed 
Gitmo (yes, Congress was a big part of that, but still..) but is now inbhumanely 
treating a United States soldier who's accused of a serious crime. This is an 
unforced error, to use the kindest possible languiage. It is not George W. 
Bush's fault or Dick Cheney's fault that Barack Obama's Pentagon is torturing 
Bradley Manning. It is only Barack Obama's fault.

It took P.J. Crowley to see the emperor's new clothes. Speaking last week at an 
informal panel at Harvard on new media, Crowley was asked about the Manning case 
and blurted out the truth. He said the circumstances of Manning's detention have 
been “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” Those five seconds of brutal 
candor cost Crowley his job today -- although, for what it's worth, he is an 
American hero to me and to many others.

Look, this is not a commentary on what Manning did or not do. He is charged with 
a serious offense under the law in leaking classified documents. His advocates 
call him a whistleblower. I'm not sure what Manning's defense will be but I do 
know two things: 1) he is entitled to his day in court, just like anyone else 
and b) he is also entitled to be held in humane conditions, not a form of 
torture -- sleep deprivation is torture -- which may aimed at forcing a confession.

I'm 52 years old, and I'm constantly amazed at how much about human nature I 
still don't really get. What exactly goes on in Obama's mind? He's a smart and 
supposedly idealistic guy who came of age during the Reagan years, who surely -- 
those first times he dared to dream about the Oval Office -- saw himself taking 
all the obvious hypocrisy. Instead, he is taking presidential hypocrisy to new 
levels. What switch got turned off, or on, that stops him from ordering a halt 
to the mistreatment of Bradley Manning?

How does Barack Obama look in the mirror some mornings?