SCOTUS: Gitmo Detainees Have Habeas Rights

I presume they were supposed to be read their Miranda rights, too,, before being taken from the battlefields of Afghanistan. It is difficult to do that when you are being shot at, but I suppose life appointed justices never have to worry about such things.

I have not read the entire seventy (?!) page opinion yet, so I cannot comment on whether the legal arguments lead logically to the ruling. But I do understand the heart of the problem was the Bush Administration’s cowboy diplomacy in the matter of redefining the status of the detainees in order to avoid judicial review in the first place. The Geneva Convention itself allows for the summary execution of illegal combatants to begin with. But if Bush had labeled them POWs, they could have been tried, convicted, and legitimately sentenced to the death penalty all within the legitimacy of international law.

Now we have scandals over torture, the circus that will be civilian trials assuming other countries do not take all the prisoners themselves, and some guilty detainees walking free along with innocent ones. Americans are going to be put in danger with this ruling, but it is still largely the Bush Administration’s fault.

Here those frequent “thud” sounds? It is ACLU lawyers colliding with each other at airports trying to buy tickets to Gitmo to drum up business.