After three-and-a-half years in a military brig somewhere in South Carolina (U.S. Guv is reticent about disclosing Gulagian addresses in or out of the country), then another year as a guest of the Federal District Court in Miami, Jose Padilla, 36, was convicted of "terrorism," and is expected to be sentenced to life imprisonment. For being an "enemy combatant." He'd gone to Egypt a while back to study the Koran as a Muslim convert, and apparently applied to an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000. Made it to Cairo, but not up to those scary mountain fastnesses, where Al-Zwahiri & Bin Laden, the deadly soft-shoe act, do their devilish thing.
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, then a full subscriber to the Cheney / Bush / Rove / Perle / Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz geopolitical weltanschauung, announced Padilla's "capture" at O'Hare airport in Chicago in May 2002, interrupting a trip to Moscow to do it, as further proof that U.S. Guv was acting with dispatch to catch up on the horrific attacks Qaeda was undertaking, "an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the U.S. [again] by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb." This one, Ashcroft said, was capable of being even more deadly than the 9/11 atrocities -- causing "mass death and injuries" to Chicago's unsuspecting White Sox fans, Playboy bunnies, etc.
Strangely though, the 'dirty bomb' accusations, the result of information extracted in various ways from other terrorism suspects in foreign lands (free of the restraints imposed even in such places as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo), were not part of the bill of particulars against Padilla in Miami. Prosecutors didn't even refer to them, standards of proof and perception having risen substantially since the halcyon 9/11 days when the president swore that "those who knocked these buildings down will hear from us soon," and the country's blood was righteously up. Instead, the guilty verdict that Padilla received after a single day of deliberation by the Miami jury, was cobbled together expediently by attaching his case to that of two other terrorist suspects, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, two Middle-Easterners operating in South Florida as alleged support group cell members dedicated to providing money, recruits and supplies to Islamic extremists around the world. U. S. Guv's proof that Padilla, an unstable Hispanic gang member from Chicago's tough South Side, was really a Qaeda homie? He'd met Hassoun at a mosque in Broward County! Jose had wanted to go to Afghanistan and learn to fire recoil-less rifles . . .
Dr. Angela Hogarty of Columbia, a forensic psychiatrist whom the Federal District Court allowed to examine Padilla for 27 hours prior to his Miami trial, has indicated that her patient may have suffered from 'borderline personality' before his interest in Islam, and said that Jose's 40-odd months of total isolation, sleep deprivation, psychological battering by "trained" interviewers "determined to break his personality down, to reduce him to a point where he'd renounce himself and accept the government's view of what he'd been doing," constituted "mental torture," and obviated the proceedings: "He clearly suffered from cognitive dysfunction, loss of memory, severe depression and panic attacks" -- exactly the kinds of things that veterans returning from the Iraq War endure, many without adequate help. In its rush to justify its Iraq invasion, the Bush administration was looking for "evidence" to support its claim that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist groups, were somehow part of a cogent World War III of Terror. That could somehow be confronted in conventional, more or less rational, terms. Instead of the messy, fragmented lives people like Padilla -- a minor criminal looking for a rationale for his dysfunctional life -- really represented.
Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said: "Jose Padilla received a fair trial and a just verdict." A female member of the jury, though prevented from commenting at the courthouse, having been shunted out a side entrance and discouraged from speaking to the press, admitted in a phone conversation that she'd all but made up her mind before deliberations began: "[But] we had to be sure," she said later in Spanish. "We wanted to make sure we went through all the evidence. But the evidence was strong, and we all agreed on that."
A day and a half (12 hours) to sift through three months of testimony, on eleven charges shared by three individuals?
I could care less about Jose Padilla personally, but what was done to him is reprehensible. I can't believe what this country has become over the last seven years. Here's an exercise for all you Bush apologists: every time this administration does something, ask yourselves how you would react if it had been done by Clinton. It's funny how Cheney's assessment of an Iraq occupation during the first Gulf War has come back to haunt him. He was 100% right then, and now he has confirmed it. I only wish the criminals in office could suffer what others have because of their policies.
Jury of his peers? No. He was tried in Broward County, one of the most repressive, Republican counties in Florida (Florida....where have I heard that name before?.........) -- as I recall, they've busted up concerts there in the past for using bad language. Hmm. But they HAD to charge him with something, having incarcerated him for so long for, apparently, nothing, now that the Dirty Bomb thing wouldn't stick. We're not talking about Dirty Bombs, bleeding gums, etc. That was a simple scare tactic to rationalize chucking somebody down a deep hole and forgetting about him (look up the word "oubliette"). There was no such bomb. There was never going to be such a bomb. Just like the string of more than a dozen Terror Warnings that were thrown out there to keep us on our toes, but were cobbled together out of nothing and resulted in nothing.
Instead let's talk about putting on trial people who we CAN make a solid case against. George Bush. Dick Cheney. Alberto Gonzales. Their crimes, crimes that have actually LED to the deaths of thousands of Americans, can be listed and documented and PROVEN. Corrpution with impunity should not the the role of government. Impeach. NOW.
(And why is it that the right-wingnuts are always such bad spellers, with only a passing knowledge of grammar and punctuation?)
It is true that there have been cases in which people have been railroaded by "juries of their peers" and liberals do not support this.
Possibly your confusion comes from the fact that liberals do not like to see people convicted without serious trials, the two of you have assumed the consequent and therefore think that liberals are committed to the view that any jury trial is a fair one.
But liberals do not have to share your poor logical skills.
I am less bothered by the claim above that the juror had made up her mind before deliberation, since this still means after the evidence was presented. But it is a serious worry that Padilla was tortured into a level of mental illness in which he could not have helped in defending himself. If that is true, then this trial was a mockery. Maybe Padilla coincidentally was guilty and deserves this punishment. But if he was not capable of helping his defense, then his actually being guilty would not have much to do with his being convicted. And crazy liberal that I am, I do find that troubling.
Secondly, can we conclude from your attitude that you would be okay with your loved ones being hidden away without trial for 3 1/2 years if the government said they were doing something wrong? Even if, years later, they were charged with doing something completely different? You would find that fair, would you?
And the torture, or, excuse me, "enhanced interrogation techniques," wouldn't bother you either? After all, Padilla is an American citizen, so what goes for him - goes for anybody. How much incarcertaion without a trial would be acceptable for your loved ones, Steamboat? How many stress positions, or days without sleep, or who knows what else (since much of what he endured is still a "national security" secret) are you willing to accept for them?
The question isn't whether he was a terrorist or not. He may well have been everything Ashcroft said he was, but he is still an American citizen, and as such, both the 5th and 8th amendements should apply to him. Or are those only reserved for *your* loved ones?
You malign 12 American jurors for finding on evidence a terrorist guilty.
It is your type who let the terrorists into America on 9 11 and then lost track of them as they were not "terrorists".
How someone so inhuman could make light of Chicago being contaminated by a radioactive bomb is has no defense. You are making jokes about bleeding gums, hair falling out, tumors, cancer and intestinal bleeding.
There is nothing funny about that no more than your making a convicted terrorist out to be just a Muslim worshipper.
The only justice in the things you have sown is when the terrorists are not stopped by the fine people of the FBI that the terrorists will contaminate the area where you and the cheering bloggers here exist as liberals live in the urban areas. That way those simple relands people will not be slaughtered for your protecting terrorists and attacking this government.
Make certain though Mr. Lombardi that you defend the bombers then too as you take in breaths of plutonium and anthrax as they were just "terrorists" too who only went to Egypt to study but never made it to the mountains.
Probably because the terrorists are learning it now in compounds in America thanks to learned people like you.
On a different note, I don't think that the government handled the case appropriately. I've always been a strong opposer of torture. It's just my belief, so flame away. I take a more Socratic approach to torture. It's illegal. It's immoral. I don't think it's OK to just shut your eyes and pretend that it doesn't happen. There are no "ticking time-bomb" scenarios. The information produced from it is often unreliable and the limited amount of reliable information could also have been obtained through more conventional methods. I worked as an intelligence collector/analyst for the Army. There are plenty of ways to track WMDs besides relying on torture. Tighten our borders. Anyways, just my lowly two cents.
Yes, fear terrorists....But don't believe the government is protecting you by violating the civil rights of a citizen presumed guilty before the charges were found to convict him. The government CONTINUES to ignore port security, CONTINUES to ignore the haphazard transport of low-level radioactive waste, CONTINUES to ignore all the elements that would have to come together for a dirty bomb to happen. Taking our shoes off at the airport and a high profile media trial/public hanging is NOT making us safer
(And no, I'm not talking about the WTC. That *was* an atrocity, no-one is denying that). Your govt has done more to radicalise Islam that Bin Laden ever did. He must thank Allah every day for the sterling work the US does to drive new terror recruits his way.