In a grotesque display of irony, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino condemned actions by the Junta against citizens in Myanmar.

The administration is "distressed ... about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without representation or charges," she said.

It's quite "distressing."

Surely, that type of thing could never happen here, right? But it already has, and to a U.S. citizen.

With the passage of the Military Commissions Act in October of 2006, this administration claimed it could deny the right to trial to whomever the president declares "an enemy combatant."

That means Bush, Clinton or Giuliani can decide the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to you whenever he or she says so.

In existence from the days of the Magna Carta 800 years ago, the writ of habeas corpus was guaranteed even under the King of England.

Then came the case of José Padilla, a U.S. citizen branded by the administration as the 'dirty bomber.'

With no charges filed against him, in 2002, Padilla was dragged to a Navy brig where he was stripped of all human dignity and methodically tortured to the point of "irreversible psychological damage."

For three and a half years, Padilla's completely isolated detention consisted of a 7 x 9 foot windowless cell, bright lights on for days, no mattress on his steel bed, no pillows, sheets, clocks, calendars, radio, television, telephone calls and no visitors — including a lawyer — or human contact other than his interrogators for almost 2 years, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

He was regularly assaulted, hooded while held in extreme stress positions, threatened with imminent executions, subjected to extreme temperatures and even given LSD and PCP during some of his interrogations.

Experts agree the prolonged periods of isolation and sensory deprivation will drive a prisoner insane.

"What the government [was] attempting to do," said Dr. Stuart Grassian, a nationally recognized expert on solitary confinement, "[was] create an atmosphere of dependency and terror."

Ironically, techniques like these are banned under the U.S. Army Field Manual primarily because their efficacy is questionable, to say nothing of their morality.

These methods are adapted from the same ones the Soviets used on political dissidents and the North Koreans on U.S. POWs, methods that the United States once condemned, according to the Monitor.

Some officials say, however, that these methods are vital and do not go far enough.

"Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool," said Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Jacoby goes on to claim that the introduction of legal counsel "may substantially harm our national security interests."

Those chilling remarks are literally straight from George Orwell's 1984. In fact José Padilla is eerily similar to Winston Smith in that in the end they both deeply sympathize with and are terrified of the government that destroyed them.

These developments might be less worrisome if the Padilla case was an isolated incident, but it isn't. Navy veteran Donald Vance was also detained and tortured without charge or counsel for three months earlier this year.

While it may be true Padilla was no Boy Scout, even psychopaths like Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, weren't treated so inhumanely.

In fact, even high-ranking Nazi war criminals were treated with more humanity, as this week's Washington Post reports.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone. I'm proud to say that I never compromised my humanity," interrogator George Frenkel said.

"We got more information out of a German general with the game of chess or ping-pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, a World War II Nazi interrogator assigned to Hitler's deputy.

In light of the bombshell New York Times article revealing the continued systematic implementation of torture approved at the highest levels, Congress must immediately repeal the abomination known as The Military Commissions Act.

"[The administration argued that] the President always knows best," said Yale law professor Jack Balkan. These powers are that "of a dictator in an authoritarian regime. They are the powers of the old Soviet Union."

If Nancy Pelosi still considers impeachment "off the table" after these recent developments, then she has essentially taken the Constitution off the table and needs to step down.

The Padilla conviction was a pyrrhic victory for this administration but ultimately is a shameful day for our Constitution, our republic and the sacred principles of our nation.

[Reach contributing writer Aditya Ganapathiraju at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]