The Widening Gyre

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats, The Second Coming

The turn of events and the unrelenting lack of humanity as of late have left me a little off balance.

Where to begin? When you don't know where, return to first principles:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
US Constitution, 4th Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
US Constitution, 8th Amendment

This is on one side of the scale. Words and rules which have been (mostly) successful in keeping the great unwashed more or less out of the thresher. We operate on assumptions. Rules. An implicit understanding of right and wrong. We are drifting away from those things in an accelerating curve.

Supreme Court Justice Scalia provides a little insight on the 8th Amendment.

SCALIA: Seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say that you can’t stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face. It would be absurd to say that you couldn’t do that. And once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be and how severe can an infliction of pain be?

The entire quote should be digested within context and in it's entirety. It is a disgusting expression of this whole '24' mentality which seems to have locked up the whole dialog surrounding the US involvement in torturing suspects. This is a Supreme Court justice, and the model that he uses is a fucking television show. Broken.

There is no discussion of legal guilt. There is no discussion of legal rights or process. There is no discussion of real boundaries or applicability. Just a fucking tv show. From some drunk on the bar stool next door I might tolerate such a chickenshit weak minded argument. From this person I demand much much more.

We have set the stage. Enter Jose Padilla. US Citizen. Tortured and held without charges for years. Go read this somewhat long and detailed description of the treatment and trial of this human being ( link ).

Over strong objections from the government, elements of Padilla’s confinement were revealed. Here’s how the Christian Science Monitor described it:

“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 lawyers were prevented from seeing him for nearly two years.”

And another (somewhat long) quote:

“What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed,” Dr. Hargarty told Goodman. “In the darkness or in the light—in the cells, the light would be all dark for a long time or all light for a long time. And for a very long part of his detention he had no mattress at all. And sometimes he would try to sleep on the pallet, if you will, the hard steel pallet, or other times he would be in essentially stress positions where he’s got shackles and a belt and is in an awkward and uncomfortable position for long periods at a time....he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn’t see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators.”

This represents the systematic destruction of another human beings self. Then he was put on "trial" with any information regarding his treatment of unbiased evaluation of his mental state.

An often overlooked event, which in more equitable proceedings might have led to a mistrial, occurred just prior to the July 4th recess: the Miami jurors filed into the jury box -- first row, second, and third. But in what could only be a clear signal of its lack of impartiality, the first row of jurors that day were dressed all in red, the second row all in white, and the third row all in blue. This overt act, antithetical to a democratic judicial process, should have made any respectable judge livid and any responsible media outlet vocal. But it did neither.

Thus, it was no surprise this jury of red, white and blue -- having been denied the facts about the government’s ever changing charges, Padilla’s torture and illegal imprisonment, along with the denial of his other constitutional rights – such as the right to a swift trial -- took only a day and a half to review and consider three full months of testimony before finding Padilla and the other two defendants guilty on all counts.

I am not sure what more I might add to that.

As this is getting a little long, we frost this tasty little story with parting gift from the DOJ/FBI. Since we need to get the remainder of these trials rolling in order to look like something is being done about those pesky evildoers, plans for a series of show trials have begun.

The problem is, we have been systematically abusing and torturing these individuals. Even if DOJ says 'okey - dokey' about the waterboarding and whatnot, there are still pesky issues surrounding admisability and tainting. This is important since the Death Penalty will be the ultimate goal of these proceedings. I suspect that punishment was taken off the table in Padilla’s case so that fishy evidence could be introduced and a body of case law generated that these cases might push off against. Then again I know shit about law...

Short version:

Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes.

“It was the product of a lot of debate at really high levels,” one official familiar with the program said. “A lot of people were involved in concluding that it may not be the saving grace, but it would put us on the best footing we could possibly be in. You can’t erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative.” […]

John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. “Once you torture someone, it is hard to un-torture them. The general public is going to be concerned about the validity of the testimony.” …(read on)

Unlike the previous link, there is no moment of clarity here. No closure. I end with the second half of the Yeats poem and a haunting feeling that what comes slouching along to Bethlehem is not particularly welcome.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?