Creeping dictatorship

Sullivan on Padilla

This, remember, is an American citizen, who was charged with grievous crimes even the government has now dropped for lack of any evidence. Locked away for four years in solitary confinement, and not even allowed to walk down a hallway without night-goggles, in order to keep him disoriented. Padilla may not be successfully prosecuted because his treatment means evidence from his own testimony is too tainted by torture to be admitted in court. (Qahtani has also retracted everything he was tortured to say.) This is the America Bush has created: lawless, brutal, inhumane, and incompetent. We have no evidence that any of this has made you safer. But it has struck at the very heart of the liberty this country was founded to protect and defend.