Of course, these are the same band of crapheads who, per WaPo, and RawStory decided it was necessary to change the date of Pentagon Christmas parties from December 15, 2006.  

The reason?

... offices supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon planned to celebrate the holiday season next Friday, December 15th. But an order came down from the office of General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to change the date of the party.

According to Kamen, someone in Pace's office "had fretted that it might look as if all the hootin' and hollerin' that would be spilling out into the hallways was in celebration of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's departure that same day."

Humanely? Humanely? What do they do for fun? Burn kittens alive?

I [...] read Hegarty's psychiatric affidavit and description of her meetings with Padilla, and read Grassian's overview of the effects of solitary confinement. I haven't yet read Padilla'a affidavit, and I think I'll wait awhile before I do. I'm strangely almost afraid to read it, and I wonder if that is some small whisper of some of the reasons some people can get into such deep denial about what has been done to Padilla - refusing to call it torture, inventing contorted reassoning(?) to justify it, etc, etc.

Hegarty's affidavit alone is enough to turn my stomach. Short of killing Padilla, they have probably utterly destroyed him, or at the very least so damaged him that he can never again be a functioning human being in any normal interactions with other people.

Reading it gives me such a sickening feeling of absolute disgust that I am at a loss for much further comment right now. After reading just that, I am not surprised that Padilla recoils when asked to read or watch accounts of his own interrogations, and that he still fully expects to die, I gather at the hands of his interrogators, in the brig.

And I wasn't even there. I cannot imagine the effect on me of being a guard there and doing this to a man. Just the fact that I could not stop it makes me feel ashamed, and feel that in some ways it is my own responsibility. I am unsure why...

I think any normal person, if they knew of a someone doing this to an animal, would be outraged and sickened, and probably call the police, even on their own family members...

The excuse for this heinous treatment of a US citizen is the same as that given for an entire orgy of despicable treatment of prisoners held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and a gulag archipelago of secret military facilities around the world...
...
The more important question now, however, is when will those who, like Ashcroft, used this case to shamelessly exploit our fears for political purposes face their own day of accountability in a court of law?
-- Jose Padilla's Ordeal, Robert Scheer, The Nation, Dec 06/06

If their motion is denied I'll be even more nervous about the state of the union.

And if he's done what they say he's done...why didn't they try him the right way and cut him a deal to rat out his terrorist buddies like they do every other crime?  And if he refused just try him the right way.

If he is what they say he is, I'd like him locked up...but we gotta let him go after this ridiculously unlawful treatment.  If our laws and ideals don't mean squat that is...