Shame On Us, Each of Us

This picture from the New York Times greeted me as I opened my e-mail this mnorning:




It was not a good way to start the day.

In case you didn't see this or another article on the same subject, that is Jose Padillla on his way to to the dentist for a root canal. For some reason not entirely clear, Padilla's jailors chose to videotape Padilla's transfer to the dental offices. Here's a description of the overall process used:

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

But worse was yet to come, becuase as the article progressed to tell the story of Padilla's "detainment" one could almost imagine Padilla being grateful for the break the dental appointment provided in the relentess tedium and humiliation (and probably terror) that has been his life for the last three-and-a-half years.

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, "as part of an interrogation plan." . . . .

Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of "truth serums."

Such treament is (thank God) apparently without precedent

Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, said, "There’s nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement."

Let that last bit register for a minute: "especially considering that this was pretrial confinement."

Padilla, an American citizen "detained" on American soil, was originally thought to be plotting to blow up a "dirty bomb." But, just as it appeared that the issue of his detainment by the military, without charges or hearing, was about to get to the Supreme Court, the governement changed its theory (thereby lettiong the "favorable" Court of Appeals decision stand) and classified Padilla as a criminal defendant, turning him over to civil authorities for trial.

Mr. Padilla’s status was abruptly changed to criminal defendant from enemy combatant last fall. At the time, the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the legality of his military detention — and thus the issue of the president’s authority to seize an American citizen on American soil and hold him indefinitely without charges — when the Bush administration pre-empted its decision by filing criminal charges against Mr. Padilla.

Mr. Padilla was added as a defendant in a terrorism conspiracy case already under way in Miami. The strong public accusations made during his military detention — about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment buildings — appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America.

Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a "North American terror support cell" that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad” in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas 'to participate in violent jihad" and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.

In citing this article, I do not intend to try, again, to excoriate Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the other architects of the US policies on detainees. Those folks are well beyond redemption or understanding on this issue. What I really wonder about now are the hundreds of "little people" -- soldiers, jailors, and lawyers -- who actually implement this system. What are they thinking? How do they sleep at night? Is the Nuremberg Defense -- "just following orders" -- enough to allow them to look themslves in the mirror?

In reading this article, I was reminded, again, of Hannah Arendt's famous book on Eichman: "The Banality of Evil."