Jose Padilla found guilty on all three felony counts

Allahpundit and Ace laughingly empathize with the pain of The Daily Kos kids, the NYT, and WaPo. Goal post moving is observed, as in: Well, he may be going to prison for life without parole for conspiring to kill people for Al Qaeda, but nobody ever proved those original allegations about a dirty bomb.

Ace:

Those who love America show it by denigrating and beating the s[***] out of her at every opportunity. Call it the Ike Turner school of patriotism.

Its amazing any Americans are upset about Padilla's convictions by an American jury. Though the government dropped the dirty bomb charges (due to the difficulty of conviction + the necessity of giving up intelligence information in order to convict), it's widely known that Padilla was captured while following a plan which would've ended with his exploding a dirty bomb amidst Chicago apartment buildings. I guess some Americans believe what is "widely known" equates to government lies.

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Enjoy prison, Jose Padilla. You deserve it.

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Slight shift of subject:

Here we see the security value of "aggressive interrogation" which "is not torture." Padilla was captured when terrorist Abu Zubaydah was aggressively interrogated. Zubaydah told the CIA exactly where and when Padilla would show up in Chicago, and exactly what Padilla would be doing. Viola! Padilla showed up exactly where and when Zubaydah said he would, and doing exactly what Zubaydah said he would be doing.

President Bush:

Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. [...] Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him into custody -- and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by the CIA.
[...]
For example, Zubaydah disclosed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- or KSM -- was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and used the alias "Muktar." This was a vital piece of the puzzle that helped our intelligence community pursue KSM. Abu Zubaydah also provided information that helped stop a terrorist attack being planned for inside the United States -- an attack about which we had no previous information. Zubaydah told us that al Qaeda operatives were planning to launch an attack in the U.S., and provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location.
[...]
We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.
[...]
Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks -- a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh. The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
[...]
KSM revealed that Khan had been told to deliver $50,000 to individuals working for a suspected terrorist leader named Hambali, the leader of al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate known as "J-I". CIA officers confronted Khan with this information.
[...]
Based on that information, Zubair was captured in June of 2003, and he soon provided information that helped lead to the capture of Hambali. [...] Hambali's brother was soon captured in Pakistan, and, in turn, led us to a cell of 17 Southeast Asian "J-I" operatives. When confronted with the news that his terror cell had been broken up, Hambali admitted that the operatives were being groomed at KSM's request for attacks inside the United States -- probably [sic] using airplanes.
[...]
KSM also provided vital information on al Qaeda's efforts to obtain biological weapons. During questioning, KSM admitted that he had met three individuals involved in al Qaeda's efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent -- and he identified one of the individuals as a terrorist named Yazid. KSM apparently believed we already had this information, because Yazid had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM's arrest. In fact, we did not know about Yazid's role in al Qaeda's anthrax program. Information from Yazid then helped lead to the capture of his two principal assistants in the anthrax program. Without the information provided by KSM and Yazid, we might not have uncovered this al Qaeda biological weapons program, or stopped this al Qaeda cell from developing anthrax for attacks against the United States.
[...]
Terrorists held in CIA custody have also provided information that helped stop a planned strike on U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti -- they were going to use an explosive laden water tanker. They helped stop a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi using car bombs and motorcycle bombs, and they helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf in London.

Do we want to stop biological and chemical and dirty bomb and anthrax attacks in Chicago and NYC? Do we want to stop the Houston shipyard from being blown to smithereens? We do not torture. This means we do not cause inhuman pain, and we do not cause permanent injury. We make terrorists cold, and we make 'em listen to very loud Red Hot Chili Peppers. I once went to a yard party and subjected myself to these exact hardships. Junkyardblog analyzed, in 2006, a NYT much hyped leak of the interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah:

The shocking thing isn’t that we did these things to Abu Zubaydah. The shocking thing is that we didn’t do more. And another surprise is that these milquetoast interrogations yielded any useful information at all. That they did is a testament to the professionalism and prudence of the CIA interrogators who accurately gauged what Zubaydah could handle, and got he information with no more cruelty than was necessary.