Yes, you have a point.

But, the standards have long been that
easily a PoWs life can be so bad that
maybe usually there will be little
difference. Consider what the USSR
did to German prisoners -- marched off
to Siberia or some such and never heard
from again. North Korea did to US
prisoners in the Korean War? What
North Viet Nam did to Senator McCain?

And our torture was water boarding,
cold rooms, loud music?

Your "decency and respect" are
asking a bit much. Did I mention,
"War is hell"?

Supposedly at times prisoner interrogation
can yield quite useful results, but
you may be correct that from Gitmo
we didn't get much (at least that we
didn't already have).

But there is such a thing as a
dumb ass clusterfuck, or the older
FUBAR or SNAFU, and there's been
a lot of that since 9/11.

More
narrowly we elected W, and with
9/11 he and Cheney seemed to get all
super-hyper concerned about their
oaths of office to "protect and
defend the US", paid a bit too much
attention to threat scenarios of
Saddam putting a nuke in a cargo
ship, sending it to a major US port
city, and setting it off, etc.
Yes, it was a difficult threat
to evaluate -- small risk of a
big loss.

As we know now, Saddam was talking about
WMDs mostly to scare his own people
and neighbors, and our intelligence
was so poor we didn't know better.

So, W/Cheney convinced themselves that
Saddam, definitely a bloody thug,
following Stalin, was a threat to the
US and that the US should invade
and occupy Iraq and set up a
democratic government and could do
so quickly for maybe $60 billion.
The guy who said $120 billion
or some such got fired. The guy
who said we'd need 500,000 troops
to occupy the country got fired.

Did I mention clusterfuck, FUBAR,
SNAFU? Saddam had told us that it
would be tough to hold the country
together. We didn't listen and,
instead, ignited essentially
a several sided civil war. By the
time we put down the civil war,
likely more Iraqis had died a
violent death, from us and/or
other Iraqis, per month and in total than
at any time under Saddam. We
killed, what, 5000+ US soldiers?
Seriously injured, what, 50,000+,
100,000+? Blew, what, net present value
$3 trillion? SNAFU? FUBAR?

There was a lot of really sick violence.
E.g., when an angry Shiite captured
a Sunni or an angry Kurd captured a
Shiite, or an angry Sunni captured
a Kurd, etc. new chapters in torture
could be drafted. And several US
workers where strung up from
a bridge.

So Manning didn't t like it. Easy enough
to understand -- I didn't like it, either.

But, W/Cheney were elected, about as
fairly as the US can manage. Of really
high importance, the US Congress
authorized Gulf War II and appropriated
the money for it. And the result was
a bloody mess: The people really
badly injured were the lucky ones
because they died quickly and, thus,
didn't suffer as much
before they died.

But, that was reality. It's not too
difficult to see just why it happened.
It's clearly what is likely to happen
in many situations of military action
and US national security. It's not
really a big surprise. I'm sorry
reality is like that, but in this
universe, in this solar system, on this
planet, now, that's the case. Heck,
there were bloody battles in the US
Civil War, Medieval wars, Roman
wars, etc. There's been plenty of
torture, as I recall, by some Spanish
Roman Catholics. Again, the lucky
ones were the ones who died
quickly. Death? There's been
a lot of that. Ugly? Once
I was reading the Bible and got
to where the pregnant women were
cut open, threw the book across
the room, and have not opened it
again since then.

For W/Cheney, as far as I can tell,
they were superficial,
simplistic, simple-minded,
silly, sloppy, stupid, etc. and put
in less thought and planning than
needed for a good Sunday BBQ.

The thing for a person to do is to try
to stay out of the way of such a huge
disaster. That's what Manning should
have done.

More generally all US mainstream
media and all US voters should
clearly understand that when
a politician starts talking
passionately about "protecting
the US" (translation: covering
his ass so that if something
happens don't blame him) and US
military action in foreign lands,
firing experts with skeptical
estimates,
"to spread democracy, freedom, and
prosperity", see a big chance of
throwing away a lot of US blood
and treasure, ugly, violent deaths
of a lot of people "over there",
and a really big clusterfuck,
FUBAR, SNAFU.

Track record: Korean war,
mixed. Viet Nam war, total
SNAFU, accomplished essentially
nothing good. Gulf War I,
pushed Saddam out of Kuwait
quickly and relatively cleanly.
Gulf War II, total clusterfuck
and will likely result in just a
Saddam II in Baghdad. Afghanistan,
smaller scale clusterfuck, essentially
nothing good. Syria, seed of
a total clusterfuck -- just add
military aid.
Egypt, the US supplies
the Egyptian military, and they
keep down the radical Islamists,
don't attack Israel very much,
and keep the Suez canal open.

It's mixed.