Scott Horton says that classified Department of Defense documents show how the enforced nudity practices used on Bradley Manning is deliberate policy to a break prisoner’s will but can have unpleasant repercussions.

Manning’s special regime raises concerns that abusive techniques adopted by the Bush Administration for use on alleged terrorists are being applied to a U.S. citizen and soldier. Classified Defense Department documents furnish an alternative explanation for the use of enforced nudity: “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.” Other documents detail how enforced nudity and the isolation techniques being applied to Manning can be used to prepare the prisoner to be more submissive to interrogators in connection with questioning.
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Under established rules of international humanitarian law, the detention practices that a state adopts for its own soldiers are acceptable standards for use by a foreign power detaining that state’s soldiers in wartime. So by creating a “special regime” for Bradley Manning, the Department of Defense is also authorizing all the bizarre practices to which he is being subject to be applied to American soldiers, sailors, and airmen taken prisoner in future conflicts. This casual disregard for the rights of American service personnel could have terrible ramifications in the future.

It amazes me that people in authority take these measures assuming that their own people will never be at the receiving end. Remember that Ray Davis, a reputed CIA agent, is currently being held for murder in a Pakistan jail. What would be the US reaction if the Pakistani authorities subjected him to this kind of treatment? He is already being kept in isolation with round-the-clock monitoring.

Meanwhile, authorities stressed the stringent measures they have put in place to protect Davis in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail, following angry rallies in which his effigy was burned and threats from extremist clerics.

Surveillance cameras are trained on his cell in an isolation wing, his guards have been disarmed and a ring of paramilitary Punjab rangers are posted outside. About 25 jihadi prisoners have been transferred to other facilities.

What if the authorities torture him to get him to talk? What if they forced him to be naked for extended periods of time to break him psychologically? The US would have absolutely no standing to protest, since they are doing it to their own soldier.

Maybe the US authorities just don’t care since it is never the policymakers who are at risk of such retaliation but lowly people way down the totem pole and thus expendable.