Pfc Bradley Manning will likely face court martial – and if we don’t act now, he could be tried on charges that he ‘aided the enemy.’ That would threaten the foundation of investigative journalism, e.g., by criminalizing the publication of intelligence information. We’re calling the Department of Defense to demand they drop the “aiding the enemy” against Manning.

Senator Dianne Feinstein put out a press release indicating that the Department of Defense should consider taking the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, also known as Lariam, out of the DoD drug formulary as it is too dangerous.

Feinstein also indicated the drug has been administered to military personnel without the safeguards put in place by a 2009 Department of Defense protocol. Moreover, according to the press release, “These service members are now suffering from… preventable neurological side effects….”

And what “preventable neurological side effects” were these?

Up until now, it’s been accepted that only the CIA waterboarded detainees at black sites in the “war on terror,” and only three prisoners at that. But a new investigation of available materials from Congress, Inspector General reports, first-hand and second-hand accounts in the press, as well as other documentary evidence, shows that use of waterboarding-style torture was likely used widely by U.S. forces, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo.

Last March, Kurnaz told the German press about the forcible use of drugs on detainees at Guantanamo, including the administration of anti-malarial medications. One article at DW World cited investigatory stories by Jason Leopold and myself on the use of the controversial drug mefloquine on all the Guantanamo detainees.

In the RT video, Kurnaz talks about his stay in Kandahar, imprisoned by the U.S. military before he was shipped to Guantanamo. He was age 19.

The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions, others who were intoxicated by the possibility of some giant conspiracy.

If anything, this story is about an intelligence and oversight scandal.

Sec. Gates–who does have his future to think about, after all–wants to make sure his successors (or at least his future employers) understand. No more defense contractors need get tossed into the terrible winepress of budget austerity–there are plenty of fighting folks, ready for trampling.

Our government has apparently conceded it can’t keep its networks secret from China.

The commissions’ main purpose is to produce government propaganda, not justice. These are meant to be show trials, part of an overarching plan of “exploitation” of prisoners, which includes, besides a misguided attempt by some to gain intelligence data, the inducement of false confessions and the recruitment of informants via torture. The aim behind all this is political: to mobilize the U.S. population for imperialist war adventures abroad, and political repression and economic austerity at home.

One entity that has thus far avoided all responsibility for the leak are the folks in charge of the Defense Department’s IT. As I have pointed out, DOD’s network security was embarrassingly bad–worse than your average mid-sized corporation. But to make their negligent security even worse, they had already suffered a damaging compromise of their systems when, in 2008, malware was introduced into their system via removable media, the same means by which Manning is alleged to have downloaded the WikiLeaks cables.

It seems to me we’re never going to see that report until after the eight-year statute of limitations on torture expire for everything described in the report that clearly exceeded John Yoo’s expansive interpretation of what constitutes torture.