All by Myself (UPDATED)

There's a bit of a buzz in the blogosphere today about a Times story on the inhuman conditions under which Jose Padilla - the "dirty bomber" and an American citizen - is being held in a South Carolina military prison. Bitch PhD's take on those conditions is the best I've seen (though for sheer horror, try to read the opening scene of the article.) If I live to 2100, I'll never understand how it came to pass that we so quickly lowered ourselves to the level of our enemies.

UPDATE: James Wolcott is also worth reading on this, in his own right and for the material he quotes: "Like the Iraqi insurgents who drill holes in captives before slinging their corpses out into the street, the US seems to staging its own Sadean theater of cruelty simply because it can.")