Yesterday, Cenk Uygur wrote a rather hysterical post in support of accused terrorist Jose Padilla. He made a number of factual assertions that I showed were wrong here. Now, Uygur has attempted a comback in this long, rambling post. As usual, Uygur is long on emotion. He says that he used to be a Republican. He says that he is a real American, whereas I, apparently, am not. But if you strip away the irrelevant verbiage, what does he actually have to say about the points at issue?
He admits that i was right: contrary to his claim, Padilly was not subjected to years of sensory deprivation.
He admits that I was right: far from being deprived of legal representation, Padilla has had lawyers representing him in court from within days of his apprehension.
He doesn't quite admit that I was right in pointing out that the central point of his original post--that the government deliberately destroyed the DVD of a single Padilla interrogation in 2004--doesn't make any sense. But he doesn't offer any evidence in support of that claim, either, nor does he explain how it could make sense for the government to do what he baselessly alleged.

So what does Uygur have to say? Basically, he says that he disagrees with the federal courts about Padilla's case. Uygur's central complaint is that the administration held Padilla as an enemy combatant rather than charging him with a crime. Uygur thinks this is unconstitutional:

He is a citizen who before the Bush administration would have had the benefit of all of his constitutional protections. With this government in charge, it didn't work out that way for him. ... The executive branch arbitrarily and at its sole discretion decided to label a United States citizen arrested in the United States an enemy combatant and stripped him of all of his constitutional rights.

This is Uygur's opinion; it is not, however, the opinion of the federal courts. The question whether the Bush administration had the constitutional authority to hold Padilla as it did, as an enemy combatant, has been squarely presented to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. You can read the court's decision here. The Court held unanimously that Padilla's rights were not violated. The Court relied on decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942) and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S.Ct. 2633 (2004). Incredibly, Uygur purports to recap the legal history of Padilla's case, but he fails even to mention the fact that Padilla's constitutional arguments were heard and rejected by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals!

Now, it's possible that Uygur may have some quarrel with the legal reasoning of the 4th Circuit's decision. If so, he keeps it to himself. What Uygur does do is try to distinguish Padilla's case from Hamdi's with this factual argument:

The only other time we did something similar was to Yaser Hamdi – another American citizen the Bush administration designated an enemy combatant. Hamdi was at least caught in the battlefield in Afghanistan. There was evidence that he was a combatant, lawful or otherwise.

Once again, Uygur is simply wrong about the facts. Here are the facts about Padilla, as stipulated to before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals:

Appellee Jose Padilla, a United States citizen, associated with forces hostile to the United States in Afghanistan and took up arms against United States forces in that country in our war against al Qaeda. Upon his escape to Pakistan from the battlefield in Afghanistan, Padilla was recruited, trained, funded, and equipped by al Qaeda leaders to continue prosecution of the war in the United States by blowing up apartment buildings in this country. Padilla flew to the United States on May 8, 2002, to begin carrying out his assignment, but was arrested by civilian law enforcement authorities upon his arrival at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

The Court made these findings:

Padilla was, on the facts with which we are presented, "armed and present in a combat zone during armed conflict between al Qaeda/Taliban forces and the armed forces of the United States."... Padilla took up arms against United States forces in that country in the same way and to the same extent as did Hamdi.

So Uygur is simply wrong in his effort to distinguish Padilla from Hamdi.

Uygur makes one point that may be reasonable. He criticizes the administration for now having charged Padilla with crimes that are different from the actions that were the basis for his detention. As Uygur noted, this angered Judge Michael Luttig, and it is the reason why I wrote in my original post, "I think there are legitimate grounds on which the government's handling of the Padilla case can be questioned." I don't know why the administration chose to charge Padilla with plotting attacks that would have occurred overseas rather than in the U.S. The case is about to go to trial, and we will see how strong those charges are. They are certainly serious; if convicted, Padilla could face life imprisonment. In any event, the fact that Padilla is charged with conspiring to commit terrorist acts overseas rather than in the U.S. in no way justifies the over-the-top accusations that Uygur makes against the Bush administration.

Beyond that, Uygur thinks that our treatment of detainees is too harsh. This is a longstanding debate which I will not try to rehash here. Suffice it to say that he offers no evidence of any mistreatment of Padilla. The fact that he was kept largely in solitary confinement does not constitute mistreatment. The fact that his cell was seven feet by nine feet does not constitute mistreatment. The fact that his cell was lit by a light bulb rather than sunshine does not constitute mistreatment.

Padilla's lawyers claimed that he had been abused in captivity to the extent that he is unfit to stand trial. The trial judge has rejected that claim. The trial will proceed, and more facts about Padilla's terrorist activities will emerge, as will more information about the conditions of his captivity. I'll hazard the guess that Padilla was a lot more comfortable, physically, in the naval brig than he was in the al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

For now, the most we can say is that Uygur thinks it was illegal for the Bush administration to hold Padilla as an enemy combatant, but the federal courts disagree.