Lamo's elegant responses show a man attempting to detach himself from the realities of Manning's harsh detention and worrying legal prospects. They also show a man with enough philosophical soundness to reject questions about acting with hindsight.

Lamo told the Guardian's Ed Pilkington that he has not closely followed Manning's recent pretrial hearings:

It's not because I take it lightly, but because I take it as seriously as I do. Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it. You either fold it into your character, come to terms and go on with your life, or you get stuck in that moment forever. For a while I thought I would be. I took it badly. But I came to terms and continued my life some time ago. It has, after all, been two years.

... I knew my actions might cost him his life. In that respect, any other outcome is preferable.

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Addressing supporters on a cold and wet English evening, the 41-year-old Australian looked fit and healthy despite half a year spent in trapped inside the small apartment he shares with Ecuador's diplomatic staff.

He gave no hint that he would end the standoff, which has seen him spend six months as a fugitive from European justice, saying he was holed up at the embassy for fear of the U.S. investigation into his activities.

"While this immoral investigation continues, and while the Australian government will not defend the journalism and publishing of WikiLeaks, I must remain here," he said.

While the U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets, Assange is currently wanted by police over allegations of sexual assault stemming from a trip to Sweden in mid-2010.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have suggested that the allegations are a ploy to extradite Assange, first to Sweden and then to the U.S. The Swedish government and Assange's alleged victims deny it, saying they are simply seeking justice.

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"The conditions that Manning was under, they can only equate to death row detainees," said the soldier's attorney, David Coombs. "If the Quantico brig could have put him in a straitjacket in a padded room and not had anybody complain, they would have." Manning's defense is claiming that the accused whistle-blower was subjected to unlawful pre-trial punishment, and are calling for all charges against the soldier to be dismissed as a result.

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When Pfc. Bradley Manning did speak up, his crack about hanging himself with his underwear only heightened the concern for his safety, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Denise Barnes said, so she ordered him to be stripped naked each night.

"There was never an intent to punish Pfc. Manning," she testified for the prosecution at a pretrial hearing.

Barnes said she didn't consider Manning's comment in early March 2011 serious enough to warrant placing him on suicide watch but "I felt that I needed not to take that comment lightly, and I didn't."

Barnes testified on the ninth day of a hearing to determine whether Manning's nine months in maximum custody at the base in Quantico, Va., amounted to illegal pretrial punishment. He was always on either suicide watch or injury-prevention status and Manning claims the conditions were so harsh that the charges, including aiding the enemy, should be dropped.

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While the Times' Washington Bureau chief David Leonhardt defended the decision to simply republish an AP wire on the proceedings, Sullivan took the Grey Lady to task. "The testimony is dramatic and the overarching issues are important," she wrote.

Leonhardt told the public editor via email:

As with any other legal case, we won’t cover every single proceeding. In this case, doing so would have involved multiple days of a reporter’s time, for a relatively straightforward story. The A.P. article recounting the main points of Mr. Manning’s testimony about his conditions of confinement that ran on page A3 of The Times conveyed fundamentally the same material as a staff story would have.

However, as Times reader David Morf noted in a reprinted letter, using AP wire copy "let the story bury itself." Following Sullivan's piece, a number of commentators have taken issue with Leonhardt's reference to "any other legal case," since for many Manning's treatment by the U.S. military and his role as a whistle-blower make  his case exceptional.

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"Brad’s treatment at Quantico will forever be etched into our nation’s history as a disgraceful moment in time,” he said. “Not only was it stupid and counter-productive, it was criminal. An entire group of individuals, who I have no doubt were honorable, chose to turn a blind eye to how he was being treated … They cared about something more: the media impact.”

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Military judge Col. Denise Lind announced the change Sunday at a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning's trial was set to begin Feb. 4. But Lind says pretrial proceedings will push the start date back to either March 6 or March 18.

The hearing is to determine whether the highly restrictive conditions Manning experienced for nine months were justified. The defense claims the restrictions were so punishing that the case should be dismissed.

Two psychiatrists have testified that the brig commander kept Manning tightly confined despite their recommendations to ease them.

The 24-year-old is charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy. He could get life in prison.

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The prosecution produced grim props in an attempt to justify Manning's stringent detainment regime as a necessary means to keep the soldier from committing suicide. The chief prosecution lawyer, according to the Guardian's Ed Pilkington's courtroom reports, held up a knotted pink bedsheet -- a makeshift noose Manning reportedly fashioned in U.S. military custody in Kuwait, just days after his arrest. "The prosecutor also produced a second noose made from sandbag ties and two metal objects that he suggested Manning may have intended to use to harm himself, though the soldier said he did not recollect those items," reported Pilkington.

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Manning answered questions from his defense attorney as part of a pretrial motion arguing that the detained soldier suffered “unlawful pretrial punishment” and should thus have his charges dismissed for his time spent in what amounted to solitary confinement. According to reports, Manning described in detail his conditions while detained in Kuwait and then at Quantico when he returned to the U.S.

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"I didn't feel that Pfc. Manning should be detained more than 90 days in the brig," Choike told the hearing, recounting that he had conveyed the same view to his superior at the Pentagon when the accused whistle-blower arrived at the brig.

As Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola reported from Fort Meade:

Choike gave over three hours of testimony from the witness stand. The most critical testimony probably came during Judge Army Col. Denise Lind’s line of questioning. She asked him about the Sanity Board that was to determine whether Manning was mentally fit to stand trial or not. It was having problems meeting and completing its work. Lind asked if he believed Quantico was adequately resourced to house someone of Manning’s stature.

Other maximum custody (MAX) detainees, the inability to predict the number of incoming detainees, downsizing and the fact that the Brig did not have “dedicated medical support” all made it difficult. Choike answered “no.” The Brig was not a place for long-term confinement. It was adequate for 90 days.

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Manning is expected to speak about his treatment at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico as his attorney David Coombs aims to show that his detainment constituted illegal pretrial punishment, such that Manning's charges should be reduced or dismissed. Coombs has described his client's first months in the brig as "the functional equivalent of solitary confinement" — confined to a 6-by-8-foot cell, with no window or natural light, for more than 23 hours each day.

Via the Baltimore Sun:

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In a move known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions,” Manning did not plead guilty Wednesday, rather his attorney put forward a plea notice indicating that the defendant will plead to some lesser included charges, but not the entirety of charges as they now stand. The motion hearing judge may choose to accept or reject the plea notice.

As Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola reported from Fort Meade, "Pleading to lesser-included offenses makes it possible to not plea to committing offenses under the Espionage Act or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Importantly, he can plead guilty without accepting the government’s charge that he 'aided the enemy' or 'exceeded authorized access' on his computer." If his plea notice is accepted, Manning could thus avoid facing life in prison (prosecutors have already stated that they are not seeking the death penalty -- even though an "aiding the enemy" charge can legally carry such a sentence.)

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According to Raw Story, "Judge Denise Lind said more than 600 emails withheld by prosecutors should be handed over to the defense, though she did not explain the reason behind her decision." Manning's attorneys requested the emails as evidence for their argument that their client was subjected to cruel and illegal treatment while detained at Quantico Marine base. Manning was held in a solitary cell, stripped naked and could wear only a suicide-proof smock to bed.

Raw Story reported that the officers' emails "discuss the military’s plans to respond to queries from reporters about Manning’s detention, preparing for protests, changes to Manning’s list of visitors and other details, according to the judge."

Glenn Greenwald took to Twitter to note that what comes from the email handover "should be very interesting."

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Assange decried the U.S. "assault on WikiLeaks," invoking Pfc. Bradley Manning's detention within the first minute of speaking:

Bradley Manning, science fair all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government. He was charged with a death penalty offense. These things happened to him, as the U.S. government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me.

As of today Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 856 days. The legal maximum in the US military is 120 days.

Assange went on to skewer the U.S.'s role in the 2011 Arab Spring:

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The 41-year-old Australian, who has fought for two years against efforts to send him to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct against two women there, addressed a crowd of more than 200 supporters, reporters and dozens of British police, as he spoke from the balcony of Ecuador's mission.

Ecuador on Thursday granted Assange asylum and he remains out of reach of British authorities while he is inside the country's small embassy. Britain insists that if he steps outside, he will be detained and sent to Sweden.

Assange and his supporters claim the Swedish case is merely the opening gambit in a Washington-orchestrated plot to make him stand trial in the U.S. over his work with WikiLeaks - something disputed by both Swedish authorities and the women involved.

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Yet warning signs abound that 2012 will be another year in which, in the name of national security, those rights and liberties are only further Guantanamo-ized and abridged. Most notably, for example, despite the fact that genuinely dangerous enemies continue to exist abroad, there is now a new enemy in our sights: namely, American oppositional types and whistleblowers who are charged as little short of traitors for revealing the workings of our government to journalists and others.

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Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.

Punish the Whistleblowers

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One of the counts, aiding the enemy, carries the possibility of the death penalty, but prosecutors have already said they will not seek it in Manning's case.

The recommendation this week was made to Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, who is what is known as the convening authority in the case. The military justice system has important differences from the civilian system, so I spoke to Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, to explain the basics.

We've now had the investigating officer as well as another officer this week recommend a court-martial to the Military District of Washington commander. What's the next step?

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A couple hundred thousand dead civilians have a way of making such noble ideals seem like dollar-store tinsel. And so, throughout our decade-long foreign policy debacle in the Greater Middle East, we in the U.S. have generally agreed that no one shall commit the gaucherie of dwelling on (and “dwelling on” = fleetingly mentioned) civilian casualties. Washington elites may squabble over some things, but as for foreigners killed by our numerous wars, our Beltway crew adheres to a sullen code of omertà.

Club rules do, however, permit one loophole: Washington officials may bemoan the nightmare of civilian casualties -- but only if they can be pinned on a 24-year-old Army private first class named Bradley Manning.

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