Padilla case seen as a tainted victory for Bush (Reuters)

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Padilla case seen as a tainted victory for Bush
Fri Aug 17, 2007 1:59PM EDT

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The guilty verdict against Jose
Padilla showed the Bush administration could win a high-
profile terrorism conviction despite questions over whether
it acted legally in detaining the U.S. citizen for 3-1/2
years without charges.

But critics and law experts called Thursday's verdict a
messy win for the government, in which it was able to
avoid answering for its long detention and interrogation
of Padilla without the legal rights normally granted U.S.
citizens, and, his lawyers said, for torturing him.

Some said it showed that the administration still lacks a
workable system for trying terrorism suspects nearly six
years after the September 11 attacks.

"The verdict is important because it provides cover. It
validates the government's tactics in a way that the jury
may not have necessarily meant to," said American
University law professor Stephen Vladeck.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1738855920070817

[Solly Mack]

1. providing cover - which Bush has gotten a lot of for his crimes

[Jack Rabbit]

2. This was not a tainted victory, it was a major defeat for the Bushies

The rationale for the Regime's detainee program was dealt a fatal blow yesterday. Yes, Virginia, it is possible to get a conviction of a terrorist suspect represented by competent counsel based on evidence presented in open court. The rationale for Bush's network of off shore gulags and "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that due process is not compatible with public safety and national security.

Like almost everything else else Bush and Company have said and done during the course of the war on terror, that is a lot of steer manure.

There is no need for secret prisons, torture or indefinite detention. The American justice system works in these cases just fine. Nothing was broken until Mr. Bush tried to fix it.

The Padilla trial is a major defeat for neoconservative tyranny posted by Jack Rabbit Thursday August 16.

[Kagemusha]

3. You mean, juries will believe anything so why not use the damned courts.

Yeah, it defeats their propaganda, but I don't think it's necessarily justice.. and the jury never got to hear about the gulag+ treatment in the first place.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. I've sat on sever juries in my time

Each one was a wee bit skeptical of the facts as presented. A juror does not necessarily believe anything the prosecution tells him. That has never been my experience, and the juries oin which I've sat have reached all varieties of verdicts.

The issue of the torture of Mr. Padilla in the gulag is a matter that a higher court should decide. There should be no doubt that Padilla was tortured and held in despicable conditions under draconian rules. But how is it relevant to the case? That the Bush Regime held him incommunicado for three and a half years without charge and subjected him to torture during that time is a cause for criminal action against members of the Bush Regime, including the Frat Boy himself. It does not mean that, some time prior to that, Mr. Padilla did not conspire with members of al Qaida to do harm to Americans, which is what he was charged with doing. A higher court should decide what remedies Mr. Padilla has to redress the wrongs done to him, as well as whether those wrongs were of of such a nature to effect due process once he actually received it and, if so, whether that was to the extent that the verdict should be set aside.

I am satisfied that the process is now working as it should, that Mr. Padilla got his day in court and the appeals will go forward. I am also satisfied that he conspired with members of al Qaida to do harm to Americans.

Most of all, I am satisfied that as a result of this trial and the verdict it produced, those of us who have said all along that the Bush Regime's detention program constituted grave human rights violations, were and remain contrary to the Geneva Conventions and were and are entirely unnecessary are vindicated. I would go so far as to charge members of the Bush Regime, including Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves, with war crimes for their parts in designing, approving and implementing this vile plan to kidnap terror suspects, hold them without charges and interrogate them with torture either directly by agents of the US government or by third parties in the instances of extraordinary rendition.

I would prefer that this be done in US courts. The same justice system of which Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their friends placed so little faith that proved yesterday that it can protect Americans from terrorists is also capable of protecting Americans from sadistic tyrants who would trash the Constitution and its guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law and individual civil liberties. If it turns out that the US justice system is unable or unwilling to bring charges against members of the current regime and prosecute them in good faith, then I advocate an international tribunal for war crimes in Iraq and crimes against humanity arising out of the so-called war on terror be established for that purpose.

[Kagemusha]

5. Nice words. I have no idea how well the facts back them up here.

I don't want to carry water for Padilla but... my understanding of the evidence in the case is that it's thin, very thin, and the prosecution made it seem a lot bigger than it was through razzle dazzle and making Padilla to be a big fish rather than a minnow. But at least there is an appeal to be had at all. That's an improvement.