The dog ate their DVD

MANIFESTO

Personally, I don't see how it's possible that José Padilla is competent to stand trial, but it's certainly possible he'll be exonerated anyway.

The government made a secret video of its interrogations of "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla. But now that he's on trial, the Feds claim they don't know where it went ...

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared "enemy combatant" under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla’s mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency—which had custody of the evidence—was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke ...

"This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. “It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

I can't say I disagree with Mr. Sifton's assessment as another day sets in George Bush's Amerika.