Padilla case: a shame and outrage

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From the New York Times:
Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.
This is just sickening. Why would you need to force a prisoner into sensory deprivation just to walk him down the hall for a root canal? I can think of no reason other than pure sadism.

Everything wrong with the Bush administration is encapsulated in the Padilla case (or rather, lack of a case). A US citizen imprisoned, tortured, mentally damaged, and now it turns out the case against him isn't so great. It's disgusting. I think Padilla's treatment by the US government is exhibit A in the case for impeachment. I hope there is a great reckoning for the people responsible for this. They need to be thrown out of office, shunned, and punished for their crimes with long prison sentances.

Sullivan, Greenwald, Atrios, and Digby all weigh in with strong reactions to on this NYT article.

Comments

Miguel said…
Thanks to the War on Terror, it seems we now hold prisoners who the government feels need to be incarcerated forever just because they've been so mistreated that releasing them (or even holding a public trial) would be scandalous.

I think there should be a pithy phrase for this nightmare scenario, but I can't come up with one.
11:22 PM, December 04, 2006
Anonymous said…
In Latin America these acts of disappearance, incarceration without trial, mistreatment, torture are referred to as the 'dirty' war. Congress needs to examine the 'dirty war' the Bush adminsitration is conducting. I suspect there is more too it than we know.

It is not a defense to say, "Gosh, it is only a few and besides, if you are not Muslim, don't worry. But, by the way, if you don't support this dirty war, then maybe you should worry."
9:53 PM, December 05, 2006
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