Apparently the Fox News wannabes on CNN forgot to mention that the Times Square Bomber pled guilty to all counts against him the other day, and will be serving the rest of his days in jail, while that famous domestic radical insurgent, The Underwear Bomber—who the media portrayed as the next generation of High Tech Terrorism—may soon do the same. No waterboarding or torture necessary. In regard to the latter, he freely talked; the only “torture” involved was answering for his actions to his father, who first reported his suspicions concerning his son’s radicalism to CIA operatives in Nigeria. But since so much of the media prefers to report failure than success, these kind of things tend to get lost in the quest insure that the low-information voter remains dull-witted. It wouldn’t do to overturn the paranoid’s belief that Hussein Obama coddles terrorists, and making the world unsafe for white people.
Now, let’s consider the “triumphs” of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” 9-11. Now wasn’t that a major victory? Especially when the Bush people had forewarning of the operation, and the FBI received tips from field agents and civilians about the suspicious activities of some of the terrorists, and ignored that information. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a good example.
Let’s see. There was the alleged JFK International jet fuel exploders, who, it turns out, were somewhat unschooled on the nature of chemistry, and their plan, if carried out, would have been foiled by their own stupidity; jet fuel pipelines are oxygen-free, and pipes are required to be buried under at least three feet of solid concrete, making them hard to get at. Then there was the Miami Seven—also known as the Liberty City Seven—who were nothing more than a fanatical group practicing a strange religious brew of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and witchcraft that excited the paranoia of local residents, much like the Move did in Philadelphia. These people generally kept to their own affairs, but the Bush justice department, at the time headed by the clownish sycophant Alberto Gonzales (who owed his career “success” to Bush family charity), decided that it would be fascinating to entrap the African American and Haitian outfit to “prove” that the Bush administration was doing more than spying on political enemies and innocent civilians. The FBI dispatched two Muslim-Americans with criminal records to “infiltrate” the group and plant the idea of blowing-up the Sears Tower in Chicago, and see what happened. The “plot” never went beyond the “gee-whiz” phase, but for a Bush administration that had ramped-up the fear factor to stratospheric levels, this was more than sufficient. Following two mistrials, five of the seven were eventually convicted by a jury that couldn’t tell the difference between a real crime and one fabricated by Bush officials.
But wait—how about the Jose Padilla case? He was (eventually) convicted on four counts of “conspiracy” to help recruit people to fight in hot spots like Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The Seattle Times praised the prosecution of the case in an editorial, but others were much less effusive in their praise. London-based journalist Andy Worthington, admittedly not a very objective observer, decried the fact that Padilla had been convicted on what could at best be described as nothing more than an Orwellian “thought crime” without one shred of evidence that he intended on doing anything remotely approaching terrorism; if the government could violate the civil rights of a citizen with such impunity, who was safe?
The Times’ editorial staff was clearly suffering from amnesia. For those who have forgotten, the original justification for the arrest of Padilla in November, 2002 was that he had “information” concerning the 9-11 attacks because of his alleged association with 9-11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Like the rest of the allegations against Padilla, there was no evidence to support this claim, but that was just another detail. Padilla’s principle crime was that he was married to an Egyptian woman, and he had just returned from a trip to several Middle Eastern countries, which combined with his being a former gang member-turned-Muslim made him immediately suspect. Although it soon became apparent that Padilla had no knowledge about 9-11 that anyone could not have gleaned from watching the news, and that the Feds had nothing that would stand-up in a court as evidence worthy of a charge, he continued to be detained. A month into his detention, the Bush administration staved-off a court order to release him by suddenly declaring him an “enemy combatant,” and transferred him to a military facility in South Carolina—still without charge. The administration justified the detention by claiming that Padilla was “closely associated” with Al-Qaeda operatives; that he was engaged in “war-like acts” that “suggested” preparation to commit acts of “international terrorism”; that he had “information,” and that he was still a “threat.”
It may be useful to note at this point that there was no mention of the famous “dirty bomb” plot in the original allegations. The “dirty bomb” theory, in which Padilla was allegedly tasked by Sheikh Mohammed to plant a radioactive device targeting three high-rise buildings, was eventually leaked out by the Bush administration without supporting evidence to the media, and predictably the media ran with it like a crazed bull in a china shop. While in the military brig, Padilla endured what could at best be described as extremely dehumanizing treatment; a legal brief requesting dismissal of his case contained the following revelations:
“In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s ‘dependency and trust,’ he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity.”
“In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep.”
“Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla’s interrogations would begin.”
“Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.”
After years of such abuse, Padilla was reduced to little more than a piece of furniture who viewed his own attorneys as part of the interrogation team. His dehumanization was also evident in the way his case wound its labyrinthine way through the courts. Perhaps if Padilla had been a white man (and not a Latino and a former gang member), the fact that he was held without charge for years, and then with charges backed by made-up “evidence,” the courts might have demanded his immediate release. Instead, the courts either toadily accepted the Bush administration’s ludicrous “enemy combatant” claim, or when a court recognized that multiple Bill of Rights amendments were being wantonly violated, Padilla’s continued detention was allowed to continue. Such was the case when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals determined that it was violation of Padilla’s civil rights to detain him as an “enemy combative” outside a war zone, but refused to release Padilla from custody until the Bush administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Perhaps predictably, the Court refused to even hear the case. It was absurdly determined that Padilla’s appeal was “incorrectly” filed in New York instead of South Carolina, and then the Court behaved even more outrageously by claiming that Padilla’s lawyers should have brought their case against the commandant of the military brig, and not Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—ignoring the fact that he was directly responsible not only for actions of the military, but had given the order that Padilla be held in a military brig himself.
To stave off another potential court order ruling that Padilla’s continuing incarceration without charge was illegal, the Bush administration in November 2007 finally filed charges in a civilian court against him—charges that did not mention anything about the famous “dirty bomb” plot, or mention of any plan to stage any attacks inside the country, or mention Al-Qaeda connections; there was simply no proof to substantiate any of these allegations that made so much play in the media. Padilla was convicted on “conspiracy” charges by a clearly compromised jury sold on the Bush administration’s playing on national paranoia. The fact that the principle “evidence” against Padilla was a few phone calls cherry-picked out of thousands that were used to make the highly dubious claim that Padilla actually knew unnamed “terrorists” testifies to the highly dubious nature of the government’s case against Padilla from the very beginning. But it was enough for a jury (at least one member who stated she assumed Padilla was guilty before the trial even started) who saw only a sullen, uncommunicative man and not someone who had just emerged from a torture chamber, courtesy of their unfair and unbalanced government.
The racial aspect of the case cannot be dismissed out of hand, either. Hundreds if not thousands of white supremacist domestic terrorist "cells" are allowed to exist throughout the country unmolested. Most yearn for the day they can take to the streets, bring down the government, save the white race while slaughtering as many non-whites as they can. Heavily redacted files forced from the FBI via a FOIA request reveal that only days before the OKC bombing Timothy McVeigh sought assistance from a neo-Nazi named Andreas Strassmeir and his cohorts at a white supremacist/paramilitary compound called Elohim City; they had probably already assisted in bank robberies to fund the project, as well as scouting out the Murrah Building. At least one of its members were in Oklahoma City the day of the bombing. Yet, thanks to the Clinton administration, all of this was suppressed; he wanted to keep this in the “lone nut” phase. This isn’t “conspiracy theory” stuff, it is simple fact, revealed after the FBI belatedly released thousands of previously withheld documents on the case. Those who aided McVeigh murder 168 people continue to roam free.
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