His article concludes with:

The case of Jose Padilla is one of the most despicable and outright un-American travesties the U.S. Government has perpetrated for a long time. It is impossible to defend that behavior, let alone engage in it, and claim with any legitimacy that one believes in the principles that have defined and guided this country since its founding. But there has been no retreat from this behavior. Quite the contrary. The atrocity known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is a huge leap forward to elevating the Padilla treatment from the lawless shadows into full-fledged, officially sanctioned and legally authorized policy of the U.S. Government. The case of Jose Padilla is no longer a sick aberration, but is instead a symbol of the kind of Government we have chosen to have.

Digby writes:

I get the sense that a lot of this stuff was rank experimentation. We have known for years that Guantanamo became a guinea pig farm very early on in which they trained green interrogators in "new" techniques. This was probably part of a similar program.

And then quotes from a 2004 Vanity Fair article:

The only testimony I hear is from General Geoffrey Miller, the task-force commander. "We are developing information of enormous value to the nation," says Miller, a slight, pugnacious man said to be a strict disciplinarian. "We have an enormously thorough process that has very high resolution and clarity. We think we're fighting not only to save and protect our families, but your families also. I think of Gitmo as the counterterrorism-interrogation battle lab."

Put two and two together, people.  It's a "battle lab" - nothing more, right?

It seems that, the "information of enormous value to the nation" which General Miller and his subordinates were developing in Gitmo was not, as was implied (if not outright expressed), information on terrorism and terror plots.  The idea that they were interrogating these captives for information on terrorism and plots has been one underlying both the excuses the government has given for keeping these people captive so long, and as an argument from opponents for letting them go.  You know the argument:  "any information these folks would have had is so old and stale, there's no point in keeping them any longer."

The point of Gitmo and keeping people in the Charleston brig, it seems, probably never was to extract from them information about terrorism and plots.  Actionable intelligence, it would appear, was derived rather rapidly in-theater, in places like Bagram, Poland, Rumania, odd apartments or houses in Pakistan, and elsewhere.  Remember, we are told the CIA developed great respect for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed because he was able to withstand water-boarding for a few minutes.  Not hours, days, weeks, months or years.  Minutes.  And then he sang.

So, why go through all these repetitive interrogations, extended stays of months without seeing a human face (or anything other than gray walls) or hearing any sounds?

It seems unmistakeably clear that the "information of enormous value to the nation" being "developed" was not intelligence.  Rather, and first, it was the creation of an institutional memory and structure for the extended, expanded use of torture tactics by the US government.  Remember how the FBI and reluctant-to-participate military were driven out of Gitmo, when they protested against using torture?  They didn't get that the Real Program (which they weren't getting with) was not getting information from these subjects.  Rather, it was sieving out those who would be in the new Torturer Corps from the mass of military, CIA and medical personnel.  An employment interview, if you will.

Second, it was training of interrogators  - torturers - in the craft of their new trade.  

Remember the HBO mini-series "Rome"?  At one point, Pullo and Octavian abduct for interrogation the true father of Vorenus' young son, conceived while he was campaigning in Gaul.  When he resists speaking, Octavian tells Pullo to "torture him" to get his answers, as "that's what you do in the Legions, right?"  Pullo's answer:  "I don't know how ... we have specialists for that."  (They settle on cutting off the cuckolder's thumbs, before he answers, they kill him and dump his corpse in the sewer.)

These days, sensibilities and media attention will not allow prisoners to leave jails without thumbs - such would likely encourage them (and uncowed media) to speak out later.  Rather, psychologically breaking people - turning them into pieces of furniture - will be the way things go.  And, what better result than to have the prisoner think his own lawyers are, in fact, just another part of the government's interrogation process? To be sure, the victims of these tortures will not be likely to speak out - nor will their wounds be evident on quick inspection - after they leave.  And, just enough will leave so the false hope of release can be held out to the other captives, too....

Gitmo is the place where those torture specialists are being trained and their methodologies worked out with scientific rigor.  Padilla, al-Masri, and so many more at Gitmo were, in reality, lab rats.  They were both the subjects of experimentation - answering the questions "what works to break a man, and how well?" - and training exercises for those interrogators.  And, while the Gitmo detainees were more for the purpose of working out the procedures, Padilla and al-Masri were and are the precedents for doing it here, on US soil.  But, it mattered not that it was Padilla, qua Padilla.  He was just a convenient, sufficiently-bad guy on whom a tag "Dirty Bomber" could be hung regardless of facts, let alone guilt.

My only addition to what they've said is what I said here:

Bush, his administration, and all of his supporters, are cowards. And terrorists.

And they've shown it clearer than ever with the treatment of Padilla.

First they come for the communists
And I didn't speak up because

I wasn't a communist....

He then names Jews, Catholics, and trade unionists before the final chilling:
Then they came for me
And by that time
There was no one left to speak up.

While there is some outrage (and more intellectual distress) over the illegal and unconstitutional detention and torture of an American citizen it seems curiously muted.

i wonder if padilla is not being punished, rather than tortured.

a silly distinction?

perhaps.

would the american government, (or the israeli or egyptian governments) torture a person for information for three years?

at the least, a callous assessment of such extended activity would be that it was very inefficient. not to mention that whatever was  slowly extracted over this time period might be made useless in preventing further terrorist activity by its untimeliness - a major rationale for the torture in the first place.

so

i wonder if padilla is being punished, rather than tortured.

punished for what?

punished for being muslim at a bad time to be muslim in the u.s.?

punished for threatening his own country?

punished for threatening to act on his beliefs?

punished to protect bush presidency from public disapprobation.

but punished nonetheless

without his guilt having been established, or for that matter, his crime(s) having been isolated in the body of american law.

punished not only by the extent of his detention in isolation but also by the severity of the isolation.

i am assuming padilla has been both emotionally and sensually  deprived, that is, deprived of contact with other humans including his guards, deprived on any contact with his family or with religious leaders, deprived, for a lengthy time even of contact with a lawyer to represent him.

but he also may have suffered deliberate sensory deprivation - prevented from hearing, or from seeing, or from speaking, prevented from sensing day and night, or seasons.

experiments decades ago established the importance to infants of touching and talking.

experiments in volunteers on even short term sensory deprivation have found the effect of not being able to see or hear or feel extremely disturbing to the experimental subjects.

so an american citizen is detained by american authorities on publicly stated grounds of planning a horrendous crime

but never charged, never defended, never tried.

just desaparecido,

leaving the american public with only the words "jose padilla" and "dirty bomb" to comprehend what might have been at issue.

what court, what congress could possibly defer to this kind of presidential conduct given the political history of the united states and that of the european nations, especially britain, whose authoritarian treatment of its citizens and of american colonists set the compass for the kind of governing contract americans would create in 1785  and abide by until 2001.

the substance of jose padilla's case to me is that an american citizen was detained and sensorily deprived for an extended period of time without  his crimes or his guilt or innocence ever having been determined by a jury of his peers.

we can at least thank president bush, attorney general john ashcroft, presidential counsel alberto gonzales, and u.s. department of justice employee john yoo for demonstrating to us just how fragile the guarantees in the bill of rights of the american constitution are.

to whit,