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Jose Padilla was Tortured
Jose Padilla's was tortured beyond the point of brain damage by the United States government. He was held for three years in total isolation without trial, without access to a lawyer, and without any contact with the outside world. There's no use anymore saying, "It Can Happen Here." It already has. Read the interview with the psychiatrist who interviewed Jose Padilla, and then, I don't know, run into the street and scream or something. And then write your legislator.
After reading this interview, it's obvious to me that Jose Padilla is so broken that he couldn't possibly pose any further threat to the United States, and furthermore, it's now impossible to find out if he ever did pose any threat to the United States, because we broke him. Yes, we did it, because the government represents us. And it's our responsibility, as a people altogether, to put a stop to it.
Filed under: Jose Padilla • torture
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Just because Jose Padilla
Just because Jose Padilla emerges from his long solitary confinement a broken man does not mean, by necessity, that he was tortured into that state. Plenty of people go perfectly crazy in confinement, especially the lengthy and solitary type: no torture required. (Sam, if you'd like to argue that imprisoning people is torture, I'm listening...)
This interview is an uncompelling rehash of what we already know. Golly, Jose was subjected to that terrible instrument of torture: the "open-handed slap." And did you hear? He was kept cold for long periods of time. (Apparently not cold enough to catch hypothermia, though). And forcible showering?! It shocks the conscience!
Gosh, poor Jose didn't even have a mattress for a couple months. This is "torture" only in a sense of the word that utterly devalues its more terrifying usage. (Here's a little something of that genre found in an al-Qaeda in Iraq safehouse: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html)
The closest this interview actually comes to suggesting torture is passing along the rumor that Jose had a bad acid trip courtesy of the CIA. And I know a good dozen people who have subjected themselves to that torture, absent the hand of the gov't.