Text 20851, 105 rader
Skriven 2006-06-29 18:32:28 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 20848 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Finally!!
=================
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:45:00 -0400
"BOB SAKOWSKI -> ALL" <1:123/140> wrote:

 BS> Supreme Court Blocks Trials at GuantA­namo

 BS> By JOHN O'NEIL and SCOTT SHANE
 BS> Published: June 29, 2006

 BS> The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush
 BS> administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try
 BS> terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva
 BS> Convention. [snip]

The decision isn't the "sweeping rebuke" you might think it is.

[Quote]

BY JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, June 29, 2006 3:10 p.m. EDT

Justice Delayed
The Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (link above in HTML or here
in PDF) weighs in at 185 pages, and we'll confess we haven't had time to read
every word. But here are the major points:

    * Although Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the court's primary opinion,
Justice Anthony Kennedy decided the case. Kennedy joined Stevens and the three
other "liberal" justices in some aspects of the case, yielding a 5-3 majority,
but declined to join others, producing an inconclusive result on those issues.
(Because Chief Justice John Roberts joined the lower-court decision the Supreme
Court was overturning, he did not participate in today's ruling but can be
assumed to agree with the three dissenters.)

    * The Kennedy majority agreed that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005,
which grants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sole
jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees, does
not strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction in this case, because Hamdan had
already filed for the writ when Congress passed the act.

    * The Kennedy majority held that the military commission the Pentagon set
up to try Hamdan was not authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

    * The Stevens plurality wanted to go further and hold that Common Article 3
of the Geneva Conventions--which provides that war crimes trials be conducted
by "a regularly constituted court"--requires that Hamdan be present at his
trial, even if sensitive intelligence is being aired. But Kennedy thought it
unnecessary to reach a conclusion on this question.

    * The Stevens plurality also wanted to declare the charge against
Hamdan--conspiracy--invalid under international law. Kennedy again saw no
reason to reach the question.

The court did not decide that unlawful combatants at Guantanamo are entitled to
Geneva Convention protections as either civilians or prisoners of war, only
that Common Article 3, which governs "conflict not of an international
character occurring in the territory of one of the [signatories],"
applies--though because of Kennedy's demurral, precisely how it applies is an
open question.

(In dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas argued that Common
Article 3 does not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda--a position Roberts also
took in the lower court's decision [PDF]. Scalia and Thomas, along with Justice
Samuel Alito, also take the position that even if Common Article 3 does apply,
the commission qualified as "regularly constituted.")

The court also did not hold that the government is under any obligation to
release Hamdan. Justice Stevens:

    We have assumed . . . the truth of the message implicit in that
charge--viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted
upon, would cause great harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who
would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing
that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government's
power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities in order to prevent
such harm.

For now at least, the court has not mandated that terrorist detainees be
granted the rights of either ordinary criminal defendants (who cannot be held
indefinitely unless charged and convicted) or prisoners of war (who, among
other things, cannot be interrogated).

The chief result of this ruling will be to delay the trials of
Guantanamo detainees until Congress or the Pentagon establishes a
regime of military commissions that meets the court's approval. For
those concerned with the duration of terrorists' captivity--a perverse
thing to worry about anyway--there's little to cheer here.

[/Quote]

 BS> The Bush Regime, actively engaged in the destruction of the
 BS> America of The Founders.

Phony histrionics from a phony patriot.

Ed

-- 
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that
he knows no more. -- William Cowper

Registered Linux user #416016
Registered Linux Machine #323569

--- Sylpheed-Claws 2.1.1
 * Origin: Veritas Vos Leberabit! (1:123/789.0)