I could care less what happens to Manning, but having dealt with the gray area of psychologists and psychiatrists (who will default to the disclaimer that it isn't an exact science all the time), his being "cleared" doesn't mean a thing. All the assessment results in is a recommendation from the medical professional. Those directly responsible for his well-being take the assessment into account when making their determination, but the assessment isn't gospel.The problem with that is that he's been cleared psychologically on several occasions and so there is not clear justification for keeping him at the higher level of confinement. The brig has not given any alternative justification for the high-level confinement.
More often than not, those assessments tend to be pretty divorced from the reality of what is seen by those responsible for the patient on a daily basis, in a non-medical setting. Not saying it justifies what is claimed to be happening, but at the very basic level of this stuff, there are often a number of other things going on that just are not seen by the doctors because the patient often plays right into what some want to hear.
I'm no fanboy of the mental health folks, because they rarely want to make that hard choice, or force a servicemember to get a grip and live up to their responsibilities. There was this one doctor when I was stationed at 29 Palms who was a joy to work with though. she could put the finger on malingerers with exceptional skill, and she would break it down for them fairly quickly that she didn't care that that the Marine's chain of command was making them work and live up to their part of the contract. I miss that sort of spirit.
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