Homeland torture 101 - dehumanizing made easy

A videotape of Jose Padilla has been released to lawyers and viewed by the NYT. I can barely read the details without losing my breakfast.

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

It sounds like the stormtroopers in a scene from Star Wars. Do they really need riot gear to escort a helpless prisoner through a prison block. What is fully shackled inmate going to do? And what is the point of the googles and earphones? Is he expected to somehow secretly pass on the location of the prison dental office to terrorists? It's just cruel and inhuman treatment for the sake of cruelty. No security interest, national or prison related is served by this conduct. It's pure punishment and it's taken its toll on Padilla's psyche. His lawyers say he's not mentally fit to assist in his own defense.

Digby and Glenn Greenwald have already said all there is to say about this insanity but I'll add this.

People are arrested for treating dogs with less cruelty than this. Padilla is a US citizen and as such should have been afforded the full protection of the law. Instead our Great Decider simply declared him an enemy combatant and held him under these conditions, incommunicado, for 3 1/2 years without charging him with a thing although they flooded the press with grand accusations of dirty bomb plots and consorting with AQ. Which were clearly lies since when SCOTUS forced their hand and they transferred him to the criminal courts, they didn't charge him with these crimes. In fact their case is so weak, to date, no one can figure out what the hell he is being charged with.

These lies are echoed endlessly within the chambers of the rightwing smear machine but no proofs are ever offered. There are none. Padilla may not be a saint, he may even be guilty of some ordinary crime connected to his gang days, but he is still an American. His mistreatment not only tars our government but is a stain on each and every one of us that allows his mistreatment to continue without protest.

It's useful to remember that under the enemy combatant rule, the next Padilla could be you. If we don't fight for the rule of law and the rights of our fellow American now, who will fight for us when the jackboots arrive at our door?

Update: If you can stand it, Smoking Gun has some stills.