Padilla

I've been disgusted by the descriptions that surfaced a few weeks ago about the detention of Jose Padilla. I am shocked and appauled. Horrified. Padilla faced no charges for years -- no indictment -- and instead was detained as an unlawful combatant on suspicion of plans to detinate a dirty bomb. The indictment that was finally delivered makes no mention of this dirty bomb. The reason? The only evidence against him are toture confessions.

Great job, Bush.

So while Bush has obtained no admissible evidence against Padilla, he's abused him so thuroughly, Padilla remains only the shell of a former man barely able to control his own body.

Salon has a great article contrasting the successful prosecution of a right-wing domestic terrorist threat in Tennessee and the miserable failure of a prosecution of Padilla.

From Salon:
"Given the chance to prosecute Jose Padilla in the way that countless prosecutions had been successfully conducted before, the Bush administration chose instead to go a new route, assuring us all the while that only they knew how to keep us safe. In that, they seem to have failed."