Padilla Is Guilty on All Charges
-Abby Goodnough & Scott Shane
[A] federal jury found Jose Padilla guilty of terrorism conspiracy charges after little more than a day of deliberation. Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who became one of the first Americans designated an “enemy combatant” after Sept. 11, now faces life in prison.
Mr. Padilla’s military detention — and his sudden transfer to the criminal courts in 2006 — made his case the centerpiece of a heated debate over that approach. But some experts said the very success of the prosecution raised doubts about the administration’s insistence that the terrorism threat cannot be handled in the civilian justice system.
Professor Silliman said the treatment of Mr. Padilla at first as an enemy combatant and later as a criminal defendant exposed the “ad-hoc approach” of the administration toward accused terrorists.
But Craig S. Morford, the acting deputy attorney general, said at a news conference in Washington that terrorism must be handled on a case-by-case basis.
The Padilla verdict, he said, “clearly shows that in some cases, yes, the system can handle it.” In other instances, he said, the need to protect secret intelligence and other factors make terrorism cases unsuitable for the criminal justice system.
[New York Times]
6 comments:
This case shows that our courts can handle these cases. That is all it shows. Padilla was not convicted on any of the original sensational charges the Bush administration first discussed. Despite 3 1/2 years of ill treatment and possibly torture they could not manage to get any evidence. Bush did show he will not play favorites: even Muslims that are citizens of this country will not be granted their civil rights or due process. The Administration's big slam dunk case took almost 4 years to get a conviction that amounted to proof that Padilla was hoping to one day be a terrorist. While it was probably a just and reasonable conviction, owing to our fine criminal courts and juries, it remains to be seen how the disposition of the hundreds of other cases are going to go. At the rate the Administration is establishing, it will take about a hundred years to get about a hundred minor convictions.
Nah, there was no torture of Mr. Padilla...that was a self-righteous smoke screen that Padilla's team was throwing around. I don't buy it.
Why not? Because the Bush administration has such a good track record? Because we have only been shown to torture people to death in Iraq? Because we grant no rights to any of these "enemy combatants"? Do you believe an administration that believes torture is effective, and whose Attorney General not only approves of it, but tries to find legal arguments for it wouldn't have considered using it, especially as the years wennt by and the evidence for their "dirty bomb" assertions just wasn't coming? Are these all the things you use to bolster your argument? Or just some of them?
Because I trust the military more than I trust sleazeball Padilla and his apologists.
The NYTimes ran a piece today that captured the issue in play...i've clipped a bit of it:
Padilla Case Offers a New Model of Terror Trial
By ADAM LIPTAK
There was a second justification for Mr. Padilla’s prolonged military detention. In a sworn statement in 2003, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a federal judge in New York that Mr. Padilla should be interrogated without access to a lawyer.
“It is critical to minimize external influences on the interrogation process,” Admiral Jacoby wrote. “Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool.”
That sort of intensive and isolated interrogation, which Mr. Padilla lawyers have said caused him lasting psychiatric problems, could not have been accomplished in the criminal justice system, where the Constitution guarantees legal representation and other due process protections.
END OF CLIP
The military is not independent. There is a commander-in-chief. I wouldn't trust George W. Bush with my dirty laundry, much less prisoners rights or the welfare of this nation's youth. This is not a NY Times researched point of view. this is a Defense intelligence Specialist, who is basically saying that if you give rights to prisoners, and you know, give them a lawyer, so they perceive they might have a fair hearing and maybe not be locked up forever, tortured, or killed, they may not crack so easily. I agree with the Vice Admiral. Under those circumstances I might say anything, which is why many experts say torture is not that effective, and why the founding fathers of this country, much wiser men then we have in higher politics at the moment, amde sure there were protections built into our system. These protections, by the way, were illegally held from one of our citizens--Mr. Padilla. Now, I will point out again that the 3 1/2 years where the army got to interrogate him the way they wanted got them---bubkas, zilch, NOTHING> They convicted him on the paperwork from al-qaeda that they found in Afghanistan years ago. Nothing they believed about the dirty bomb, and nothing they "talked to Mr. Padilla" about in the last 3 1/2 years. Just the written evidence Mr. Padilla supplied in the first place. The only thing America learned from this case---is that there is really, REALLY, no avoiding paperwork. But I bet you al-qaeda switches to a more technologically advanced 'paperless office'after this case!
By the way, the last segment of the piece you provided said it all: That sort of intensive and isolated interrogation, which Mr. Padilla lawyers have said caused him lasting psychiatric problems, could not have been accomplished in the criminal justice system, where the Constitution guarantees legal representation and other due process protections. That was some of the reasons the Constitution was written---to protect people from the likes of the W. Bush Administration. Let them send W.'s and Cheney's daughters into the armed forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, and if they are captured, I am sure our president and Vice President will sleep soundly knowing that our own defense department approves of the interrogation methods the enemy will be utilizing, and has pronounced them acceptable and humane.
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