The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier's arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
Bradley Manning's treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules
US Haditha Marine Frank Wuterich discharged
The US Marine Corps has discharged the man convicted over the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a spokesman said. Former Sgt Frank Wuterich, 31, was given a general discharge under honourable conditions and completed his service on Friday, he added.
Wuterich avoided imprisonment after reaching a plea deal, but had earlier faced several counts of manslaughter. Twenty-four people died in the 2005 killings, including women and children, after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.
TVNL Comment: A general discharge, and no other penalites for a man responsible for kiling 24 unarmed civilians. Oh yes, they hate us for our freedom...
U.S. Marine snipers posed in front of Nazi flag in Afghanistan
![US marines pose with Nazi flag](http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1019884.1328816209!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/image.jpg)
The photo was eventually circulated on the Internet. According to a post on the Knight's Armament Blog, where the photo appears to have been posted in May, the Marines adopted the blue “SS” flag in reference to “scout sniper.”
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Pentagon to ease restrictions on women in some combat roles
The Pentagon said Thursday that it would ease some restrictions on women serving in combat roles, a step that in part codifies the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, where commanders have stretched rules to allow women to support ground combat units.
After a long-delayed review that had been ordered by Congress, the Defense Department said it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions that women had previously been excluded from — but would continue to prohibit them from serving in 238,000 other slots, nearly all of them in the Army and Marine Corps, as well as special operations forces. The changes will take effect in spring unless lawmakers intervene.
Picking Up the Pieces From Military Sexual Assault
Nearly 90 percent of soldiers wounded in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - some 35,000 - survived battle injuries, thanks to breakthroughs in US state-of-the art military medicine, among them, surgical techniques, regenerative medicine and prosthetics.
Neither the Department of Defense (DoD) nor the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), though, was prepared with the same cutting-edge treatment for the one in three women soldiers in those same wars - an estimated 70,000 - who were sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.
Unit leader among Marines who urinated on corpses
One of the Marines shown urinating on three corpses in Afghanistan in a widely distributed Internet video was the unit's leader, two U.S. military officials have told McClatchy, raising concerns that poor command standards contributed to an incident that may have damaged the U.S. war effort.
Even before the unit deployed to southern Afghanistan last year, it suffered from disciplinary problems while the troops were based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., the officials said.
Camp Lejeune Water Contamination: Watchdog Groups Slam U.S. Navy Over New Report
Government watchdogs are crying "bullshit" and calling the U.S. Navy a "bully" in response to a redacted federal report on the drinking water supply at the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune, the site of an ongoing pollution scandal.
The report released on Friday is a prerequisite for studies to come out in the next couple of years exploring links between chemical exposures in the late-1950s to mid-1980s and what appears to be increased levels of cancer and other diseases among former Camp Lejeune residents. Watchdog groups say that redacting information pertinent to these studies could impede justice.
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