The Workday Liberal

The lefty blogosphere is afire with indignation at the plight of Jose Padilla. What yanks my chain is the fact that there has barely been a whimper about the recent developments besides what you can find by looking for information from this side of the blogiverse.

Why isn't MSNBC or CNN on this hard?

There are many many aspects of the Padilla case that are alarming. The pictures released in court demonstrate how positively isolated he was kept during this illegal detention. The extra legal status of Padilla, the machinations of the administration in order to carry on with their outrageous behavior... it all adds up to a sorry picture which needs to be examined. But I want to focus on what it was that started this all in the first place.

Padilla was arrested after being identified by Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydahs credibility due to his mental state under the best of circumstances is highly suspect, but the administration had him tortured and that is what led to Padilla. The notion that America would unlawfully imprison one of our own citizens (or anyone else for that matter) based upon "intelligence" gathered from a mentally ill, and tortured detainee is just unfathomable. How could this possibly have happened.

Remember this if nothing else. This administration has been responsible for many examples of demonstrable errors in conducting the war on terror. Yet they want to be entrusted to conduct the war without oversight. They want to be able to determine who is a threat, whose phone ought to be tapped, who can be held without charges, who can be tortured... who they can drive insane and ruin.

Why wasn't it you or I flying into Chicago whose picture was plopped in front of a desperate detainee who would say anything to make it stop. What determines the luck of that draw. The grace of God? There but for the grace of God go your or I, because this administration holds itself accountable before none other unless absolutely forced to. Zubaydah would have ratted out the Queen of England to make the torture stop.

In fact we have already witnessed the corrosive effect that relying upon intelligence gained by torture has on our system. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was captured and tortured prior to our invasion of Iraq. The demonstrably false confession we tortured from him that tied Iraq with Al Qaeda, and WMD, was extensively used by the administration in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, culminating with the infamous Powell/U.N. debacle. This is a case study proving the actual danger of relying upon "intelligence" tortured from detainees. There are thousands of dead Americans, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's with the entire region being destablilized because the administration got this wrong. And one of the things that led them to get it wrong was relying upon the interrogators pulling info out of a detainee's pain wracked body.

In all sincerity I pray that God (I firmly believe if you care to know) will have mercy upon this nation because what has been done in our name by this administration is raw, unadulterated evil. And now we have been shown doing it to our own citizens.

Finally just let me give a prediction on the entire Padilla affair from a legal point of view going forward. The intelligence sources used to implicate Padilla can not be examined in court. The accused nearly by definition can not face his accusers. It is difficult to imagine the Government being able to prove a case without having it contaminated in some form by this conundrum. Nearly all these facts and testimony have been tainted by the misconduct of the administration. So I expect Padilla to be free before this administration leaves office, and to be a rich man due to this governmental misconduct within a year of the next administration assuming office.

And he will be a bitter person, if his mental condition allows it. Who can blame him either?