I have blogged frequently about the mess that the Bush administration has made of prosecuting alleged terrorists, a mere handful of whom have come to trial while the rest rot . . . well, you know all about that.
But in a new low in the prosecution of the War on Terror, an important videotape of the final interrogation of Jose Padilla has gone missing.
I think that there is a good chance that Barney, President Bush’s dog, may have eaten this key piece of evidence, but all the Pentagon is saying is that it can’t find it and adds, with some finality, that it won’t be able to. (No reason to be suspicious, mind you.)
You may recall that Padilla was denounced as a dangerous terrorist when he was arrested, but as Slate legal affairs correspondent Dahlia Lithwick has aptly put it, turned out to just be the wrong Muslim at the wrong airport on the wrong day.
The Justice Department has reduced the charges against Padilla one by one and shuntled him from jurisdiction to jurisdiction each time it became obvious that their “case” would get blown out of court. But Padilla remains incarcerated and may have gone crazy.
More here.