It Can Happen Here
The system of law that our Founders set up is under attack.
With the passage of the Military Commissions Act in October of 2006, this administration, with the help of Congress, essentially nullified the writ of habeas corpus to whomever the president declares "an enemy combatant."
Habeas corpus is the most sacred liberty granted by the Constitution as it protects you from arbitrary imprisonment by the executive.
In existence from the days of the Magna Carta 800 years ago, the Great Writ was guaranteed even under the King of England.
Then came the case of José Padilla, an American citizen branded by the administration as the "dirty bomber."
Apprehended in 2002 with no charges filed against him, Padilla was dragged away to a Navy brig where he would be stripped of all human dignity and systematically tortured until his mind was broken.
For three and a half years Padilla’s completely isolated detention consisted of a 7 x 9 foot cell, bright lights on for days, no mattress on his steel frame bed, “no pillow, no sheet, no clock, no calendar, no radio, no television, no telephone calls, and no visitors,” including seeing a lawyer for almost 2 years, according to the Christian Science Monitor.1
Padilla’s lawyers assert that he was regularly assaulted, hooded while held in extreme stress positions, threatened with imminent executions, subjected to extreme temperatures, and given LSD and PCP during some of his interrogations. 2
"What the government [was] attempting to do,” says Dr. Stuart Grassian, nationally recognized psychiatrist and expert on solitary confinement, “[was] create an atmosphere of dependency and terror."1
Techniques like these are banned under the US Army Field Manual primarily because their efficacy is questionable.
In fact, as the Monitor and others report, these techniques are adapted from the same methods that Soviets used on political dissidents and the North Koreans on POWs, methods that the US once condemned.
Some officials say however, not only are these vital techniques but they do not go far enough.
Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency remarked openly about the interrogation strategy that, “anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool.” 3
Admiral Jacoby goes on to unequivocally state that the introduction of legal counsel "may substantially harm our national security interests.”
"Anything that threatens" the trust and dependency... like maybe the Bill of Rights and Due Process? Legal counsel a threat to national security?
That, quite literally, is straight from George Orwell's 1984. In fact José Padilla is eerily similar to Winston Smith in that in the end they both deeply sympathize with, and are terrified of the government that has broken them.
The moment that the President declared Padilla an "enemy combatant," Mr. Bush had essentially repealed the foundation of the Bill of Rights as he saw fit and assumed powers that surpassed the King of England.
Yale law professor Jack Balkan puts it best when he writes that in claiming these powers over an American citizen, "[the Bush administration argued that] the President always knows best...” and that these powers are that "of a dictator in an authoritarian regime. They are the powers of the old Soviet Union.” 5
Padilla was finally convicted in what can only be described as a show trial based on dubious and vague charges of conspiracy that had nothing to do with the original sensational accusations.
It is shocking that there is little outcry from our leaders that a US citizen was held for 3 1/2 years without Due Process, denied habeas corpus and his fifth and sixth amendment rights, and tortured to the point where he has suffered organic brain damage and a modified version of Stockholm syndrome, all before being charged with the crime. 5,6
The Padilla conviction was a pyrrhic victory for this administration but ultimately, it is a shameful and ominous day for our constitution, our republic, and the sacred principles this country was founded on.
Notes:
1 http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0814/p11s01-usju.html
2 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=2619944&page=2
3 http://www.pegc.us/archive/Padilla_vs_Rumsfeld/Jacoby_declaration_20030109.pdf
4 http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/theres-reason-why-we-call-it-bill-of.html
5 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/1416242
6 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682846
