Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy, by Glenn Greenwald.  This is a good look at another sorry human rights abuse by our government, this time under Obama, and how the security state is out of control.  The fact that Crowley was forced out for speaking what any decent person should acknowledge is pretty terrible.  The worst part is that the right is so much worse.  Here's Glenn:

Time's Swampland, Mark Benjamin identifies the real crux of the controversy:

Free speech advocates are shocked, and, as I wrote last week on TIME.com, concerned over Obama's record as the most aggressive prosecutor of suspected government leakers in U.S. history.
Those advocates have wondered whether the penchant for secrecy in the Obama administration comes from the President, or those around him. Obama's statement on Manning, followed by Crowley's resignation, seem to suggest some of this comes from the President himself.

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It's long been obvious that the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers "comes from the President himself," notwithstanding his campaign decree -- under the inspiring title "Protect Whistleblowers" -- that "such acts of courage and patriotism should be encouraged rather than stifled."  The inhumane treatment of Manning plainly has two principal effects:  it intimidates future would-be whistleblowers into knowing that they, too, will be abused without recourse, and it will break him psychologically (as prolonged solitary confinement and degrading treatment inevitably do) to render him incapable of a defense and to ensure he provides whatever statements they want about WikiLeaks.  Other than Obama's tolerance for the same detainee abuse against which he campaigned and his ongoing subservience to the military that he supposedly "commands," it is the way in which this Manning/Crowley behavior bolsters the regime of secrecy and the President's obsessive attempts to destroy whistleblowing that makes this episode so important and so telling.

The scariest thing in the world is not Islamic terrorists, it is the US government and its lack of human rights in pursuing its war on these terrorists.  Torture, secret rendition, captivity without any likelihood of charges being brought, the list goes on and on.  Obama banned the torture, but has expanded other aspects of this assault on human decency, and the treatment of Manning by the military is a disgrace to the government, the armed services and the American people in general.