Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

What else did we expect? The bogus show trial of the bogus phony war yields a bogus guilty verdict as the bogus world's greatest democracy goes even further down the actual physical drain.

There's not much else to say about this except that even if Padilla had been cleared of all the bogus charges, the result would still be bogus.

The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents. US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment.

Fear of "brainwashing" prompted the CIA and Defense Department to underwrite research in the 1950s and '60s into the impact of isolation and sensory deprivation. The findings were included in a 1963 CIA handbook, later declassified. The book discusses the possible use of such techniques, including isolation. But it warns of the "profound moral objection" of applying "duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage."

That's what happened in Padilla's case, says Grassian. "It is clear from examining Mr. Padilla that that limit was surpassed."

He has "undergone a profound, tremendously prolonged psychological stress involving extended periods of utter isolation and deprivation," the psychiatrist writes. Grassian's report concludes: "Given the extensive research on this issue, much of it funded by the United States government, it follows necessarily that the United States government was well aware of the likely consequences of its conduct in regard to Mr. Padilla."

And that, of course, is exactly why they did it.

They didn't have enough on him to try him for the crimes he was originally charged with:

Padilla was first detained in 2002 because of much more sensational accusations. The Bush administration portrayed Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, as a committed terrorist who was part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the U.S. The administration called his detention an important victory in the war against terrorism, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The charges brought in civilian court in Miami, however, were a pale shadow of those initial claims...

So instead they destroyed him, and now -- after a trial featuring almost no evidence against him -- he's guilty as charged.

It's a splendid victory for President Bush in his Endless War.

Stalin never had it so good.