Even if Padilla is found competent to stand trial, Judge Cooke must rule on a pending motion to dismiss the case based on Padilla's abuse. So, if the trial goes forward we will still hear a lot more about what happened to him in that Navy brig. But at the end of the day, whether Padilla is tried, convicted, hospitalized, or set free, his whole sordid story stands for the single proposition that abuse begets more abuse.

Padilla was tied to the al-Qaida leadership after abusive interrogations of others—including Binyam Mohamed, rendered to Morocco where his information came with a razor held to his genitals, and Zayn Abu Zubaydah, whom as even President Bush concedes was treated to "an alternative set of procedures." Even if those tortured assertions were true, the information would have been too tainted for use at a trial. And Padilla's own isolation and sensory deprivation, which lasted for months on end, yielded what information precisely?

This abuse has been futile—aimed at the wrong man and carried out for years. It has tainted the entire Padilla trial and degraded those who did the abusing. It has alienated our former allies and undermined basic principles of humane conduct. And yet the government now claims it is "irrelevant."

But that's not quite right. The sustained abuse and isolation and disorientation of Jose Padilla is quite relevant because it's ruined his life, just as it has ruined the lives of countless Guantanamo detainees and other prisoners around the world. You would think that after more than five years of endlessly asserting, demanding, and scrapping for the power to treat enemy detainees in any way it sees fit, this government would take a bit of pride in its workmanship. Instead, it now takes the amazing position that the net effect of all these new and improved interrogation techniques is absolutely nothing at all.