Unqualified Offerings

Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details allegations of torture by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years.

Well, thank god we at least would never torture or mistreat a United States citizen in our own country, and unless one is a whining left-winger who hates America one ought to dismiss out-of-hand Jose Padilla’s lawyers’ detailing of the profound abuse to which their client was subjected, when they argue such twaddle as that:

It cannot be disputed that Mr. Padilla was tortured for a period of over three years. The pain and anguish visited upon Mr. Padilla will continue to haunt him for the remainder of his life.

Altho blowing off those allegations would make it hard to know what to make of testimony coming at citizen Padilla’s competency-to-stand-trial hearing, as reported today, my emphasis:

Craig S. Noble, a psychologist at the brig, testified that he had screened Mr. Padilla twice. He did an initial “brief evaluation” when Mr. Padilla arrived in June 2002, finding that he was “responsive, made good eye contact and, in fact, smiled periodically.” About two years later, Dr. Noble said, he conducted a “cell front visit,” in which he spoke to Mr. Padilla through a rectangular slot on his door, and discovered no new signs of “distress or lethality.”

During the hearing, two mental health experts who spent over 25 hours evaluating Mr. Padilla for the defense testified that he was disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his experiences in the brig.

“I’m not sure that any of us know what happened at the brig, but I know that something there put the fear into Mr. Padilla,” said Patricia Zapf, a forensic psychologist who examined him. “Mr. Padilla is an anxiety-ridden, broken individual who is incapacitated by that anxiety.”

But the Bureau of Prisons psychologist, Dr. Buigas, disagreed with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said Dr. Zapf’s testing was invalidated by the fact that Mr. Padilla was handcuffed during the tests, a condition imposed on Dr. Zapf by prison officials.

Yeah, handcuffing a fellow will always cause him to display symptoms of debilitating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; it would not be induced by techniques like extreme isolation for years, sensory deprivation, and that, according to his attorneys:

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig. He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time.

We are become barbarians, under Bush/Cheney.

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Update:

How is the discussion of whether he was mistreated irrelevant to the allegation that it was his mistreatment that caused him to become unresponsive and unable to assist his lawyers in his defense?