America’s Growing Intolerance How “Enemy Creep” Is Guantanamo-izing America http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175373/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg%2C_intolerance_%22r%22_us/#more

In a recent press conference, President Obama professed to find nothing legally or morally objectionable about such punishment without trial. The Pentagon, he said, had assured him that "the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards," adding that "[s]ome of this has to do with Private Manning's safety." (State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley, who had publicly criticized the Pentagon’s handling of Manning, which led to that question about him at the press conference, was soon after forced out of his job.) Perhaps we are to believe that, according to the standard put forward by Judge Kaplan, however abusive the conditions of Manning’s confinement, the impact on him pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror he is alleged to have caused...