In the last week or so two news stories have broken that are both quite important and remarkably underreported. First is the story about the issuance of an official accusation by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture that the Obama administration has engaged in cruel and inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning and the rapporteur cannot say whether torture has occurred because of the refusal of the Obama administration to grant him the usual and customary access to Bradley Manning for evaluation purposes.
Second, there is a journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who is being held in a Yemeni gulag at the behest of President Obama. Despite the fact that major human rights and journalism organizations are standing up and calling out the President on this, the issue has gotten little attention from the mainstream press.
These two stories add to the growing body of evidence of the Obama administration’s extraordinary actions to chill the speech of journalists and whistleblowers in an effort to control information about US actions in the Global War on Terror.
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