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Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.

The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as “cruel and inhuman”. President Obama’s state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning’s treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning’s conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Still, hearing the accused whistleblower’s description of this abuse in his own words viscerally conveyed its horror. Reporting from the hearing, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington quoted Manning: “If I needed toilet paper I would stand to attention and shout: ‘Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!’” And: “I was authorised to have 20 minutes sunshine, in chains, every 24 hours.” Early in his detention, Manning recalled, “I had pretty much given up. I thought I was going to die in this eight by eight animal cage.”

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CIA Whistleblower Kiriakou Indicted for Exposing Waterboarding Practices

No one can accuse Barack Obama of not tackling our government’s still-continuing torture practices. No sir. The man has made it clear – he is going to hunt, prosecute and cage those involved … in exposing them. In fact he has just tucked one under his belt. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was indicted Thursday for allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists. The following is what triggered the administration’s resolve in pursuing, hunting and finally indicting him yesterday:

In 2007, Kiriakou gave an on-camera interview to ABC News in which he disclosed that accused al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was “waterboarded” and that waterboarding was torture. Kiriakou was one of the first CIA officers to label waterboarding as torture.

He is also accused of leaking classified information to reporters. This is part of his 2007 interview with ABC’s Brian Ross.

John Kiriakou: “At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I’ve changed my mind. And I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.”

Brian Ross: “Why do you say that now?”

John Kiriakou: “Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that.”

You see, those involved in planning, sanctioning, executing, and later covering up our government’s illegal (nationally and internationally) yet rampant torture practices have all been given medals, immunity, and a guaranteed lavish good life to live. However, our President wants to make sure that what happened to his predecessor – being caught and exposed in the middle of torture mayhem – will never happen to him. After all, he is not one for stopping wars-murders-torture. So how does he go about ensuring a black-out of his illegal practices today and tomorrow? Easy – he will send a strong message to deter any soul from even thinking about exposing murder, torture and other illegalities committed by this government. And how does he do that? He will hunt, persecute, prosecute, jail and torture anyone who dares to be an American and brings to light government criminal acts.

Thus, my dear friends, here you have it. The indictment of the sixth whistleblower under the Espionage Act by President Barack Obama – the man who has indicted (hunted) more whistleblowers than all previous US presidents (by that I mean ‘ALL’) combined.

by Mike Masnick | Mon, Apr 9th 2012

This is getting ridiculous. When President Obama was campaigning and even when he first took office, he claimed that it was a priority to support whistleblowing activities. And yet, as President, he has been ridiculously aggressive in pushing vindictive criminal lawsuits against whistleblowers — often by abusing the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act is supposed to be used against spies. But the Obama Justice Department has used it over and over again against whistleblowers in a purely vindictive manner. In fact, he’s used it to bring charges against whistleblowers more often than every other President combined. This strategy turned out to be a disaster in the Thomas Drake case (which was initiated by President Bush, but continued with strong support by President Obama), where the case completely collapsed, once it became clear that the charges were nothing but a vindictive attack on a whistleblower.

Apparently the Obama administration has not learned its lesson. It has now used the Espionage Act to go after a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the CIA’s waterboarding torture regime. This now makes it the sixth Espionage Act prosecution of a whistleblower brought by the Obama administration. All other presidents before him used it a total of 3 times. As the Government Accountability Project notes, the really stunning thing in all of this is that Kiriakou will be the only person prosecuted in relation to the use of waterboarding — and simply for blowing the whistle on it.

if you torture a prisoner, you will not be held criminally liable, but if you blow the whistle on torture, you risk criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Something seems very, very wrong about this.