Christopher Hitchens: "Believe Me, It's Torture"

Let me say upfront that I'm not a Christopher Hitchens fan, but I do want to give him the credit due for putting himself through this. I couldn't have done it.

How does it feel to be "aggressively interrogated"? Christopher Hitchens found out for himself, submitting to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America's use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. VF.com has the footage. For more on this visit "Believe Me, It's Torture," in the August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair.

Why I Love Helen Thomas

Check out the look on White House Press Secretary Dana Perino's face as she calls on Helen Thomas. Perino looks like she is about to throw up ... as she should.


This post is very after-the-fact, but I just watched the above video and HAD to put it up for a couple of reasons. First: I love Helen Thomas. She may be the ONLY investigative journalist left in this country. And second: This is yet another example of how blatantly this administration has lied to us.

Listen to the exchange, particularly this section near the end:

THOMAS: "You are denying in this room that we torture, that we have tortured?"

PERINO: "I am denying that."

One has to wonder how Perino can say that with a straight face considering the evidence.

... this is the first time sources have disclosed that a handful of the most senior advisers in the White House explicitly approved the details of the program. According to multiple sources, it was members of the Principals Committee that not only discussed specific plans and specific interrogation methods, but approved them. [...]

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

I must agree with Ms. Thomas, who appears at the end to be asking the other reporters in the room to step up to the plate: "where is everybody ... for God sakes"

I'd like to know that, too!

Jose Padilla - when punishment precedes conviction

On Thursday, jurors in the Jose Padilla trial found him guilty of conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas. On December 5 he will learn his fate -- or does he need to wait?

The Padilla case may be a first -- where a now convicted criminal actually received his punishment before the trial.

On her Democracy NOW site, Amy Goodman writes:

Jose Padilla has been found guilty in court and faces possible life in prison, but forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty explains after interviewing him that Padilla already paid the ultimate price through torture -- he's lost his mind.

Never mind that his conviction was for a crime different from the reason for his arrest. This is George Bush's America, where Constitutional rights and rule of law are meaningless.

In 2002 Padilla was arrested in Chicago as he exited an airplane. The charge, by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, was that Padilla was at the center of a plot by al-Qaeda to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States.

President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in extreme isolation for forty three months.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over… He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

Keep in mind that Jose Padilla is an American citizen.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padilla out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, has spent time with Padilla. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist with his own defense. When asked if Padilla had been tortured her response was:

Well, "torture," of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

Hegarty was only able to do limited testing on Padilla, but concluded that his results were consistent with someone had suffered brain damage. When asked what happened to Padilla while in the brig, Hegarty responded:

What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind.

So there you have it. A person is imprisoned for possibly committing a crime, but before having an opportunity to meet with a lawyer, go through a trial, or even have a final judgment, the punishment is inflicted.

The New York Times report called the decision "significant victory for the Bush administration." But the real question to ask is whether this "significant victory" is on the war on terrorism or the war on the Constitution?