Congressman Kucinich said this:
“I’d like to see any prisoner, anywhere in this country, who’s being subjected to that where there wouldn’t be cries of outrage by the public. Everyone’s presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

He needs to know (if he doesn’t) how common this treatment is for prisoners. There is a great book by Tammy Menendez that you can find on Amazon in which she describes the total state of power the prison system has over individuals. If a person talks to the press, they get punished. Her story is really worth reading, and very well-written and even movingly told. It is a horrifying first-hand look at how prisoners are treated in the California prison system. When you consider the profit motive that is incentivizing imprisoning Americans, and also consider the huge outcry that goes up when anyone mentions releasing even nonviolent prisoners, and also consider that the US imprisons more people per capita than any country anywhere–this has some very disturbing things to tell us about the world we are living in. Many of us in the US grew up with a fairy-tale story of American history and only occasional dark clues from grownups about the “real” world–the one in which slaves were beaten and tortured and torn from their families, the one in which our government dropped A-bombs in the Japanese, who are now being retraumatized; and the one in which our corporo-government props up the economy with weapons-making. Consider the hugeness of the government contracts to make fighter jets, for example. It is an endless money hole. And the best some of us can hope for is jobs making the weapons. Anyone who speaks out against this religion of weapons and war is being shown what happens when they do. That is part of what this is.

So Manning being tortured and being told it’s for his own good is utterly debauched and wrong. It’s another sign of how sick the machine is. Anyone with eyes to see can tell this is not any kind of protection for Manning.