Looks kinda arabic, no? Uh, no!
Five years ago – the Feds condemned Jose Padilla as “an unlawful combatant – who, during time of war, passes surreptitiously from enemy territory into our own for the commission of hostile acts involving destruction of life or property.”
Now –
The case has become a potential embarrassment to US security officials.
After weeks of testimony about alleged Al-Qaeda plots, travels to the Middle East and the defendants’ use of secret code words such as “going on a picnic”, the prosecution rested its case with only one piece of physical evidence allegedly linking Padilla to Al-Qaeda – a half filled-out training camp application form that was said to bear his fingerprints.
There was a big surprise when the charges against him were finally unveiled – no reference to the supposed dirty bomb was included. Instead, he was charged with providing material support for terrorism and being part of an unspecified conspiracy.
“The government’s central argument is that Padilla is a bad guy who hung out with other bad guys,” one legal analyst said on the first day of the trial.
Most of the testimony is so lame as to be laughable.
John Kavanaugh, an FBI agent who led the investigation, said that when the men talked of “playing football,” “going on a picnic” or smelling “fresh air”, it was code for going on a jihad. Kavanaugh said that “eating cheese” was another reference to waging war, but he admitted he had no idea what one of the accused meant when he referred to “a reservation on the female donkey”.
Yet of the 300,000 recordings made by the FBI, only seven were presented with Padilla’s voice and he never used a code-word.
Read through the latest article. Nothing about this trial will elicit anything but more contempt for our government. Padilla may be a miserable demented lowlife. If that was a crime, we’d have to lock up Congress and the White House.
This is what happens when the government is run by appointees of George W. Bush’s caliber. This administration can not be over soon enough.
Never, ever mess with the “Feds.”
* They have more money than you do, even if your name is Gates.
* There are champion pit bulls with less tenacity.
* Some of the smug, smarta$$ USAs and AUSAs could never make it in the real world, but they sure like being in the “palace of power.”
* Some federal employees in “the system” have the IQ of a very small rock..
* Even if all charges are dismissed, you won’t have a dime left to your name, and will likely be heavily in debt.
* If you think the paperwork and hassle for getting a driver’s license is bad, multiply by 10^9 and get a truckload of new pencils.
* The toilets in a Tijuana whorehouse are nicer than the innards of many federal buildings.
* “Have a nice day!”
All courtesy of your Federal Government at work, according to a friend who had the misfortune of being wrongly accused with screwing up an SBA loan — rest his soul. I’ll bet it took ten years off his life.
#2
That pretty much sums it up, BubbaRay. It’s hard to win against the Government.
#2, Bubba,
While that might be true for your friend, and I do feel for him, Padilla has a Public Defender.
*
What scares me the most is that after being in solitary confinement for all these years he won’t be able to claim any compensation by the government. All the government will have to do is claim State Secrets and have the case dismissed.
Nor will the abuse and torture inflicted on him ever be known. This man will need serious counseling for years at a minimum and the rest of his life more likely.
What bothers me is this focus on trying to bring people to trial and prove a case. This thinking caused the US government to pass up an offer to take Bin Laden into custody, because they weren’t sure they could bring an indictment.
Maybe he’ll write a book and make lotsa money.
I would pray for our country but I am not a religious man…
#5, Mike
They had to bring him to trial on something. They couldn’t admit after their spirited defense of labeling him an enemy combatant that they had nothing.
It is ironic that they did bring him to trial. I’m quite sure they would have preferred to just drag this out a little longer until the next administration dealt with it. With all the other things coming to light about this administration, the wheels are falling off. Every day we get more proof of how inept, uncaring, thoughtless they are.
In 2009 it will be too late. Obstruction of Justice charges won’t be pardoned by former President Bush.
Is Eideard trying to use racial profiling to defend Padilla?
Padilla tried playing a bunch of games with the feds. Tough luck for him. Nobody owes him anything.
Arrests and charges like this would have happened after 9/11 no matter which party had been in power……and I think a lot of the abuses would also have happened no matter if the President’s name had been Gore or Bush.
But, for the last couple years, with each passing day, I have become more and more convinced most of these injustices would have been weeded out by ANYONE else in power than Bush, a lot sooner than 6 years after the fact.
Our goverment is quite capable of these kinds of rush to judgements no matter who runs it….there are too many examples from the past to say otherwise. And it can take 50 or 100 years sometimes for the facts of the screw up to come to light, if ever. The detention of the Japanese-Americans during WWII springs immediatly to mind. But this administration takes all the awards for fuck-up’s of the decade I think.
>>But this administration takes all the awards for fuck-up’s
>>of the decade I think.
You’re not giving credit where credit is due, Tree Man. The decade is only 7 years old. This administration takes all the awards for fuck-ups since AT LEAST Ike’s administration. And those are just the fuck-ups I can remember. The award exclusivity probably goes back to George Washington’s time, but I wasn’t born then. It’s hard to imagine anyone who could be more of a gold-medalist in fuck-ups than the current dimwit though.
#10, joshua,
I agree for the most part with most of your post.
The Japanese internment was accepted mostly as a warranted injustice at the time. People knew why they were interned. Right after the war ended and money was poured into Germany and Japan that injustice went from being a “necessity” of war to a bad thing. The “necessity” mind set though, kept the concept of actually paying these people for their lost property a secondary idea until at least the mid 1970s.
I don’t think it will take 50 years to reveal all this governments secrets.
The headline is wrong. Padilla was NEVER charged with being a dirty bomb maker. He was held in a military brig for years without being charged with ANYTHING. They even tried to deny him access to a lawyer and to tell his family where he even was.
An American citizen was held in captivity for years before even being charged with a crime and what did EITHER political party do about it? What did the mainstream media say about it? Nothing. Remember that when someone talks about how different the Republican and Democratic party are and how liberal the mainstream media is.
The problem is that the United States has never really officially taken back what they did to Japanese Americans during WWII. At the very least the power of the government to detain individuals because of their race has never been overturned. As wrong as it may be the original Court case still stands:
Korematsu v. United States 323 U.S. 214 (1944)
Hello?
The government of the United States of America is “WE THE PEOPLE”. IT IS NOT a bunch of SUITS in building strewn throughout the land. REPEAT: The government of the United States of America is “WE THE PEOPLE”. WE THE PEOPLE elect the President (etymology: PRESIDING executive, the guy that ‘makes it happen’). WE THE PEOPLE elect the Congress (CITIZENS, like YOU and I, that tell the government what we think they should do), and the Judicial branch (PEOPLE who should USE GOOD AND INFORMED FAIR JUDGMENT to determine WHAT’S BEST FOR SOCIETY) of Society.
The government isn’t an entity, or a place. Here’s an example: A CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING, it’s A GROUP OF PEOPLE.
The government of the United States is still WE THE PEOPLE.
WE THE PEOPLE allow these injustices to happen.
YOU ARE part of WE THE PEOPLE.
Write letters (physical, letters on paper, written in INK, not laser-printer) to your reps. SCAN THEM, and POST THE SCANS on the web.
……………….
OR NOT, SCREW IT ALL — IT DOES NOT MATTER. Your kids don’t know enough to care.
……………….
Time for a break away from your computer. 🙂 Good to have a friend reminding you, ehh?
Go look at your children under 13. Ask them what they think about the government telling them how to think, in spite of what YOU say.
On the other hand, you might not be informed enough to determine how you and your children should be allowed to live their lives.
Statistically, the government is counting on you not even thinking about it. That class wants to make decisions for you, and your Prosperity, about how their lives will be lived.
This is all my own opinion, of course. Based on observations I’ve made about government behavior and citizen response.
Ignore it, what’s the worst that can happen?
>>What did the mainstream media say about it?
What did the whack-a-doodle right-wing nut-job media say about it? If anything, lunatics like Adams Apple Coulter, Loofah Pad O’Reilly, and Anal Cyst Limbaugh said “Fry the fucker before the commie pinko fags at the ACLU get him a lawyer”.
Same kind of mindset that lead prosecutors to overwhelmingly oppose the introduction of ex post facto DNA evidence that might have exonerated death row prisoners. “just kill the fuckers; our problems will be over”.
God bless America.
We do tend to forget that Italian-Americans, and Germans were also interned during WWII…just not as massively as the Japanese-Americans. Some of these people were not released until 1950 and 1951. Our goverment and the unbelieveable things it can and has done isn’t just a recent event.
I don’t care who is in power, our goverment or any goverment for that matter is far more prone to being a maligent force than a benign force.
#11….Mister Mustard….ok….do I dare ask why I am now called **Tree Man** by you…..lol 🙂
#12….Fusion….we tend to think the media is very complient today….but back then, for all of the yellow journalism that went on, it was far more pacified. The goverment could get away with half assed explanations for stuff like the internment….just look at how the media in the 1930’s ignored Rooselvelts handicap…..most people in this country had no idea the man couldn’t walk and primarily used a wheel chair. Now look at the intrusiveness…..we know about a President’s uncle Charlies erectile dysfuntion….sometimes before Uncle Charlie does.
I’ve been following Padilla’s case since his arrest in May, 2002, with an 9,000 word article for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist Magazin (Jan/Beb 2004 isue) and twice a week stories on the web site firedoglake.com
This may be the single grossest deliberate violations of Constitutional rights in the history of this nation and it proves to what extent the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales Justice system will go to protect its mistakes. Padilla was born in Brooklyn and raised in Chicago. In other words, a citizen. And his rights under his citizenship werre striped away with a stroke of the pen, If it can happen to him, it can happen to you.
#20 – I have also followed this case (catching the occasional news story every 6 months or so), and I agree. Whether you think he’s a bad guy or not, he is a US Citizen and has rights as defined in the Constitution. This obvious shredding of Civil Liberties associated with this case is astounding!