I've come to the conclusion that we have lost our minds

Ahmed Ghailani seems to be a rather bad person.  In a nutshell he was accused of terrorist activity - as in blowing things up and killing people - and our Justice Department tried him in Federal Court on a couple hundred counts of bad things. 

The Judge, a Judge Kaplan, had a number of pre-trial conferences of course, and with a trial of this magnitude and all of the rabid right wing watching it as yet another failure of the commie-pinko-socialist-Islam lovin'-Obama administration, howling in outrage, threw out all the government's "evidence".  You see, the fault here seems to be that a lot of the evidence against Mr. Ghailani sprung forth during "enhanced interrogation" of others supposedly involved.  I say things like supposedly and alleged as this is still America and you are innocent until proven guilty.  Do I have any doubt this fellow isn't up to his neck in bad deeds? None.  But I'm not about to buy into testimony provided by anyone who is tortured to get it.

Long story short, the jury tossed out 274 of the 275 counts and convicted him on 1. That one carries a long prison term that will be added on to his already mind breaking Guantanamo stay and it is most likely he will be in a vegetative state when his sentence is up. The right wing is crying foul and hang 'em high, conveniently overlooking the hundreds of terror trials that have resulted in convictions while equally overlooking that FACT that nearly no military tribunal has  been a success at convicting anyone (15% or so) of anything in these sordid messes.

Most important, Judge Kaplan tossed out evidence gained by torture.  All judges do that.  If you beat a prisoner senseless with a telephone book in a jail in Los Angeles or even do some nasty stuff in the dark of night in rural Alabama, we have laws that, like it or not, are in place so that it is evidence - hard evidence - that is presented and not just what someone will say to make the pain or fear go away.

The scenario deepens somewhat with the idea that a person, a victim of torture cannot be counted on to testify truthfully "in person" if his confession or revalations  were gained from torture.  What would make anyone of right mind believe that what is being said on the witnes stand isn't just a furtherance of what was obtained illegally?  Would the prosecutores be able to say, "hey you just said this on the stand but I point out your sworn testimony when we had electrodes placed on your privates while waterboarding you, you said thus and such"?  Hello?

The culprit here is George Bush and his ilk who figured this was o'k.  He had a lawyer tell him it was o'k so "well go ahead"...let 'er rip.  The trial thus became a referendum on Bush terror treatment (a.k.a. torture) and the judge said no.