CNN– P.J. Crowley abruptly resigned Sunday as State Department spokesman over controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.

Sources close to the matter said the resignation, first reported by CNN, came under pressure from the White House, where officials were furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning, the Army private who is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, under suspicion that he leaked highly classified State Department cables to the website WikiLeaks.

Speaking to a small group at MIT last week, Crowley was asked about allegations that Manning is being tortured and kicked up a firestorm by answering that what is being done to Manning by Defense Department officials “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Crowley did add that “nonetheless, Bradley Manning is in the right place” because of his alleged crimes, according to a blog post by BBC reporter Philippa Thomas, who was present at Crowley’s talk.

“The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a serious crime under U.S. law,” Crowley said in a statement Sunday. “My recent comments regarding the conditions of the pre-trial detention of Private First Class Bradley Manning were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership.

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© CNN 2011

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REUTERS– Anxiety over Japan‘s quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from lawmakers and activists for review of U.S. energy policy and for brakes on expansion of domestic nuclear power.

President Barack Obama has urged expansion of nuclear power to help meet the country’s energy demands, lower its dependence on imported fossil fuels and reduce its climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

But as engineers in Japan tried on Sunday to avert a meltdown at three nuclear reactors following Friday’s massive earthquake, some U.S. policy makers were reevaluating their take on nuclear energy even as the industry itself offered assurances about the safety of new and existing plants.

“I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants,” independent Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on the CBS television’s “Face the Nation.”

“But I think we’ve got to kind of quietly put, quickly put, the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami and then see what more, if anything, we can demand of the new power plants that are coming on line,” Lieberman added.

Since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, many Americans have harbored concerns about nuclear power’s safety. Controversy has also dogged the nuclear power industry due to its radioactive waste, which is now stored on site at reactor locations around the country.

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RAW STORY– Last year was the deadliest yet for civilians in the Afghan war with a 15 percent jump in the death toll, the UN said in a report Wednesday which laid bare the conflict’s impact on ordinary people.

The 2,777 deaths underscore the level of violence in the country as foreign troops prepare to start handing control of security to Afghan forces in some areas from July ahead of a full transition due by 2014.

Insurgents were responsible for 75 percent of all civilian deaths, up 28 percent on 2009, the figures said.

That compared to 16 percent for international and Afghan government forces, down 26 percent on the previous year, while responsibility for the remaining deaths could not be attributed.

Large numbers of children and women were among the dead — 1,175 and 555 respectively.

The issue of civilian deaths caused by coalition forces, long a thorny question for the US-led troops, is particularly sensitive in Afghanistan at the moment.

Last week, nine young boys were mistakenly killed while out collecting firewood in an air strike in eastern Afghanistan.

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© RAW STORY 2011

Photo by flickr user Afghanistan Matters

DAILY MAIL– Colonel Gaddafi’s forces today blasted an oil terminal to smithereens as Libya’s bloody civil war entered its blackest day.

Rebels retaliated by firing back with rockets as a fireball exploded from one of the oil tanks and the sky above the Es Sider terminal, in the east of the country, filled with hideous smoke.

A witness said one of the smoke plumes was the biggest he had seen in the conflict so far.

The fresh onslaught came as Gaddafi deployed tanks and snipers to ‘shoot anything that moves’.

Forces loyal to the Libyan dictator poured into the city of Zawiyah in a desperate bid to oust the hardcore band of protesters and army defectors who have taken control.

Witnesses said dead bodies were lying in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids earlier in the week and there was no one in the streets of the centre of the city of 290,000.

‘We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere,’ one rebel fighter said by telephone.

Eye witnesses said that the city had been almost flattened after a 13-and-a-half hour barrage from rockets, tanks and war planes

The hellish scenes unfolded as senior officials in the U.S. spoke of their fears that the country had reached a painful stalemate.

Senior officials believe that Gaddafi has solidified his control over some cities but ant-government protesters have a strong enough hold on other regions to remain locked in the stand off.

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© Copyright DAILY MAIL 2011

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SALON– To follow-up on yesterday’s observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days:  brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future — not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees.  They claim that it is being done “as a ‘precautionary measure’ to prevent him from injuring himself.”  

Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs — especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring?  There’s no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself?  And if this is truly such a threat, why isn’t he on “suicide watch” (the NYT article confirms he’s not)?  And why is this restriction confined to the night; can’t he also off himself using his briefs during the day? 

Let’s review Manning’s detention over the last nine straight months:  23-hour/day solitary confinement; barred even from exercising in his cell; one hour total outside his cell per day where he’s allowed to walk around in circles in a room alone while shackled, and is returned to his cell the minute he stops walking; forced to respond to guards’ inquiries literally every 5 minutes, all day, everyday; and awakened at night each time he is curled up in the corner of his bed or otherwise outside the guards’ full view.  Is there anyone who doubts that these measures — and especially this prolonged forced nudity — are punitive and designed to further erode his mental health, physical health and will?  As The Guardian reported last year, forced nudity is almost certainly a breach of the Geneva Conventions; the Conventions do not technically apply to Manning, as he is not a prisoner of war, but they certainly establish the minimal protections to which all detainees — let alone citizens convicted of nothing — are entitled.

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Written by Glenn Greenwald

© SALON 2011

Photo by EPA