John Hinderaker has an interesting post on the hysterics by the left over Jose Padilla, a questionable martyr if ever there was one. Hinderaker discusses this post by Cenk Uygur, a contributor for Huffington Post.
Uygur takes up the cudgels for Jose Padilla, who, Uygur says, went through "1,037 days of sensory deprivation in a 9-by-7 foot cell." The problem is, Uygur evidently is under the mistaken impression that "sensory deprivation" means "solitary confinement." The two are unrelated. In fact, far from being subjected to sensory deprivation, Padilla had visitors, including an imam, read his Koran, and sometimes went outdoors to shoot baskets or sunbathe.
Uygur says that "[t]hey didn't let him see a lawyer for over two years." I don't know what his appointments schedule was, but Padilla's lawyers were making motions on his behalf in federal court within two weeks after he was apprehended in Chicago, and they have never stopped since. Uygur laments that "[Padilla] was never given any of his Constitutional rights." This is simply ludicrous. The taxpayers have spent a small fortune on lawyers for Padilla; the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court have all issued rulings on the statutory and Constitutional issues presented by his case. Perhaps Uygur disagrees with those rulings. If so, he doesn't say why, nor does he have any apparent expertise to critique them.
Now Uygur is up in arms because the government says they lost the DVD of the last interrogation with Padilla. To Uygur, this is just a cover for government torture of Padilla. But as Hinderaker points out, the government has recorded every interrogation with Padilla precisely to debunk the leftist basement conspiracy theorists' claims of torture and mistreatment.
It's one thing to want the government not to mistreat prisoners, but Padilla shouldn't be the poster child for such a cause. The behavior that landed him in jail justifies the precautions that have been taken.
|