Ian, when 1984

Successful shredding of an individual's most basic Constitutional rights, in the most public possible way -- the arrest and torture, without trial, on no showing of evidence, of a native American citizen -- is confirmed as right and proper. And we are told, The System Worked.

That is, when YOU are arrested and tortured and shut away for life if not executed, buddy, that's the so-called American Constitutional system of government, the envy of the world, at work.

For me, Ian, this just shows -- as if, as if, it needed to be demonstrated with any more clarity -- that we no longer have a Constitutional form of government in this country.

The system is broken. We live in a tyrannical form of government. We just are unwilling to admit it.

Thanks for an insightful take here, Ian, and as I noted in my e-mail to you, I think you clearly have the better argument than I do where the facts are concerned. There's nothing remotely satisfying about the verdict or the way we got to it.

I just feel like truth and reality don't matter anymore. They certainly don't matter to the Bushies, and way too many members of the public either don't know, don't care, or don't have the critical faculties necessary to parse reality out of the misdirection machine.

In that world, the ability to claim victory effectively is more important than in a world where are more than capable of figuring it out on their own. So perhaps my piece was driven by the PR imperative, huh?

At the least, I feel like today's outcome makes it a little harder for Bush to claim that torture and the suspension of due process were necessary. If we can back him into that corner, at least it keeps the bleating down.....

Sam Smith

Consider the 1790 "seditious conspiracy" law that's now being used to prosecute some "terrorists". Initially used to get rid of inconvenient loyalists left over after the Revolution; amended to throw Confederate sympathizers in prison after the war between the states; amended again in 1918 to put Socialists and Communists away. Now being used against "terrorists".

The clever thing about this law is that one needn't do anything but plan for the downfall of the US government, or any of its property. There's no standard to determine if the plan was even feasible. Just two citizens not liking the status quo.

Theoretically, you and I could conspire to chant the Greek alphabet backwards until our friend Xemu shows up from Alpha Centauri and destroys Washington with his cold-fusion-powered dephlogistonater. We could be tried and convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Why the US Supreme Court for over 200 years has tolerated this blatant violation of First Amendment rights is unfathomable.

Wait--don't tell me--it exists because it's "justice".

USC Title 18,2384--If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

I don't know that Padilla was tried on this, but other people have been, lately.

The USA is a free country.
You are free to do as you are told!

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

This is what Omar Khadr has been reduced to:

Mr. Edney said that when he saw Mr. Khadr recently, his client was so mentally debilitated that he wanted nothing more than crayons and some paper to colour on. Contrary to federal government assurances that Mr. Khadr is doing just fine, Mr. Edney said, his client is actually "ill and going blind. He needs all sorts of help."

Source

He was 15-years-old and likely brainwashed by his father when incarcerated in Guantanamo. He's been there five years, and yes he has been tortured and been left in solidary confinement for long periods of time. He's not allowed to mix with the general population while legal eagles find 'some,' any old grounds or excuse will do to find him guilty.

I think it could be a good argument that this trial shows us that the system works, in the sense that acts of terrorism are criminal acts, and terrorists ought to be prosecuted for those acts. But I remain skeptical that Padilla was convicted of actually doing anything criminal.

Rather, it seems that Padilla awas convicted of choosing bad associates. If this were a crime, then a lot of people in the military deserve similar trials: Abu Ghraib saw the purposeful rape of and sodomy of many innocent civilians and the humiliation of dozens or hundreds more. And Iraq has suffered more than a million deaths as a result of US invasion. Does that make every person who has applied to serve in the US military a war criminal?

I remain to be convinced that Padilla's analogous acts of association can be legitimately called illegal.. The main piece of evidence was a three page application with seven of his finger prints. So Padilla wanted to join al Qaeda. I have not read enough about the case to know if the prosecution succeeded in demonstrating that he actually did join al Qaeda. Did, he for instance, receive their membership card complete with the unforgable hologram of authentification? Did he receive paychecks? What precisely was the nature of the association? It matters. The M$M assumes we don't care; therefore I don't know.

If we are to argue that in this case the system worked, we would have to argue that Padilla actually intended to do harm. And if there was any such evidence offered by the prosecution in this trial, I've not bumped into it. Yes, there was highly suspicious talk involving zucchini and eggplant. But Padilla did not engage in such talk. And sometimes a zucchini is just a zucchini.

picks on someone that is much smaller? I remember as a youngster yelling, "Why don't you pick on someone your own size!"

I think the whole Padilla thing is first and foremost a territorial invasion by the state into the rights of citizens. It claims and then demonstrates the power of the state over individuals as a step in the ongoing replacement of democracy with feudalism. But there's also an element of human sacrifice -- states from Rome to the Aztecs ritually killed prisoners of war after a military victory. This sacrifice called down the favor of the gods, either because the gods liked human sacrifice or because the prisoners had fought against those whom the gods favored, and this impiety had to be expiated.

Padilla was so insignificant and so mistreated that his destruction does come across as a ritual rather than as a criminal justice procedure.

The real horror of this debacle is that a precedent has been established for the government in that a "terrorist" can be placed in solitary confinement for years, be subjected to sensory deprivation, bullied and coerced into specious "admissions", then be hauled into a Federal courtroom and tried under grossly broad "material aid" statutes. Lewis Koch, at the Firedoglake blog, has been following the trial, and it is instructive to read his "final thoughts":

Looking back, there was a part of the trial I “missed” and thus couldn’t share with you or comment upon. It happened before the trial itself actually started. I think if I had been as aware of it then as I am now, I would have forecast a much gloomier conclusion.

The issue centered around the question if Padilla was psychologically able to help his attorneys in his defense, whether he was mentally competent. Let Miami Herald reporter Fred Grimm, as he did January 18, 2007:

The accused was held in extreme isolation for 1,307 days. Held in a nine-by-seven-foot cell. The only window blacked out. He was the lone prisoner on the two-tier cellblock. He was given food through a slot in the door. He slept on a steel mattress. No reading material. No calendar. No clock. Nothing to connect him to the outside world..
But it was the short trip down the hallway for a dental examination that captured the utter isolation and sensory deprivation inflicted on Jose Padilla during his 3 ½ years in the Navy brig at Charleston, S.C.

Helmeted guards, their faces obscured behind dark plastic visors, manacled his hands and feet through slots in his cell door. They covered his ears with sound-canceling headphones, covered his eyes with blacked-out goggles.

Padilla, mind you, has been described by his jailers as docile “as a piece of furniture.”

At that point, after months of a dehumanizing interrogation regime, any useful information had long been squeezed from him.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y. and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University examined Padilla for a total of 22 hours. Thanks to an ironic twist of fate and timing, the very day the Padilla verdict came in, Democracy Now Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now! and co-host Juan Glonzales conducted an exclusive interview with Dr. Hegarty.

Padilla had refused to speak with his attorneys and they knew expert psychiatric help was necessary. Dr. Hegarty was called in:

He [Padilla] had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

The second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness…It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like…a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he …would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened…

In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically….He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn’t see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators. (LZK Note: Padilla had to be charged with a crime. He was experiencing this as a presumed innocent man.)

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

(much more, incl. links...)

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/16/reflections-on-padilla/

Eleven hours to conclude a verdict, for THREE defendants, with a 42-page instruction sheet from the judge?? "Justice" from a "red, white, and blue" jury. A revealing glimpse into the horror of unfettered state power, even employing the intermediary of " a jury of one's peers". There is more than a passing resemblance to the Moscow show trials of the Thirties here: "defendants" broken by NKVD interrogators, then frog-marched into a "People's Court", presided over by ringmaster Vishinsky, leading to a pre-determined "verdict". With any competent appellate process, this wretched farce may well be overturned, though the thought of the government using the "state secrets" dodge to cover up much of the pre-trial treatment of Padilla gives one pause.