Padilla guilty; no word yet on Bush’s Government

August 17, 2007

Padilla was found guilty yesterday. I first mentioned Padilla in 2004, when he was still being illegally held without charge or access to counsel as an “enemy combatant.” And after years of isolation and torture he was finally released into the civil justice system on charges far less than what he was originally accused of — plotting to plant a “dirty bomb” in New York.

I understand that a lot of people are rejoicing over this victory against terrorism, and I suppose it is. But Padilla is a US citizen, he was tortured, and he was imprisoned without charge for four years. The Bush administration fought hard to keep him imprisoned there forever.

Maha says:

I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11. I saw the towers collapse. I know what terrorism can do. Yet I am not such a coward that I would compromise so much as a comma of the Bill of Rights for the promise of safety.

These sniveling, pathetic little weenies who celebrate Jose Padilla’s detention and refuse to acknowledge the real issues of unlawful detention and torture are the real cowards. They dismiss what was done to Padilla, yet they are so afraid of terrorists they betray the central founding values of our country. And they think they could stand up to waterboarding! They’ve already caved! [ Al Qaeda's Useful Idiots ]

This is the larger point; in the Padilla case we abandoned our principles for expediency. I have no doubt he was up to something, but did we really need to torture and isolate him to get this conviction?

Posted in Speaking Very Slowly, Terrorism