Supreme Court rules against Tribunals

[MODU]

Looks like we are going to have to try foreign nationals in US courts, I guess.

"Supreme Court Blocks Bush, Gitmo War Trials"

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti- terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

(Cont...)

[agcatter]

The ACLU just had an orgasm.

Al Quida is laughing their ass off.  Hell, so am I.  What can you do but laugh.

[Mr. Morden]

I'm still confused about this.  Did the court actually say that they should be tried in US courts?  Or just that they should be treated as POWs?  And if they're treated as POWs, then doesn't that mean that we can continue to hold them until the war's over (which could be a *very* long time)?

[agcatter]

Indeed, Stevens actually said we can hold them in club Gitmo until the end of hostilities since they are POWs.  He left us a way out.

Fine with me.  Rot terrorists - no way Bush tries them in American courts.  Imagine how hard it would be for Ramsey Clark to have to divide his time between Sadaam's trial and all the terrorists who demand trials.  You can't expect Ramsey to have to commute clear across the world.  Hehe

[Bono]

Indeed, Stevens actually said we can hold them in club Gitmo until the end of hostilities since they are POWs.  He left us a way out.

Fine with me.  Rot terrorists - no way Bush tries them in American courts.  Imagine how hard it would be for Ramsey Clark to have to divide his time between Sadaam's trial and all the terrorists who demand trials.  You can't expect Ramsey to have to commute clear across the world.  Hehe

What happened to presumtion of innocence.

[agcatter]

beats me - I figured the people killed in the WTC were  presumed innocent before Al Quida murdered them.

[Lunar]

beats me - I figured the people killed in the WTC were  presumed innocent before Al Quida murdered them.

Well, just because someone else, say Turkey, has a flawed justice system doesn't mean that we should as well.  I don't see what we're afraid of when it comes to prosecuting these guys in courts on United States territory.  Surely, if these guys are clearly guilty, there is enough evidence without sacrificing clandestine agents.

[WMS]

Indeed, Stevens actually said we can hold them in club Gitmo until the end of hostilities since they are POWs.  He left us a way out.

Fine with me.  Rot terrorists - no way Bush tries them in American courts.  Imagine how hard it would be for Ramsey Clark to have to divide his time between Sadaam's trial and all the terrorists who demand trials.  You can't expect Ramsey to have to commute clear across the world.  Hehe

What happened to presumtion of innocence.

If they're POWs...then they don't have to be tried, do they? Of course, this also means there are POW protections that come into play and all that. This will be interesting to watch.

[agcatter]

Most of us couldn't care less about the "rights" of a bunch of blood sucking terrorists.  Like I said, Osama's laughing his ass off right now.

However, watching the Dems wet all over themselves with joy at this decision is the best thing that could have happened to the Republicans in November.  This has to be a Rove plot for sure.  I noticed Nancy Pelosi has called this decision a "triumph".  You'd think a political party that had credbility troubles on an issue like national security would be smarter than that.  However, it's been said that Nancy's not the sharpest tool in the shed.  Actually, I don't think it's lack of smarts.  I think it's just that she's spent so much time in San Fransisco, she wouldn't recognize mainstream if it bit her in the butt.

[Mr. Morden]

Lunar-

I guess the question is: what do you mean by "guilty"?  If they're prisoners of war, then we're not really holding them because of any "crime" in the conventional sense.  We're holding them because they fight for the other side in the war.

Yes, there absolutely has to be some kind of system for hearings to establish whether or not each of them is really a combatant or not.  I just don't know what the legal mechanism for that is--does someone here know the answer?  If a country is holding an enemy combatant, and there's some controversy over whether that person really *is* a combatant, then who adjudicates that?  What does the Geneva Convention say on that question?  What does U.S. law say?  Is it adjudicated in the civilian court system of the country holding the prisoner, or is it resolved some other way?

[Bono]

Most of us couldn't care less about the "rights" of a bunch of blood sucking terrorists. 

How can you prove they are terorrists without a trial.

[nlm]

From what I've been able to discern, this ruling has little to do with POW rights and more to do with checks on Presidential powers. As I read it, Bush can execute these trials just as he wished to - provided he gets the blessing of Congress to do so. I fail to understand some of the over reaction and outright spin posted in this thread.

I can not say I've done a complete study of the ruling, but it looks like one that any believer in checks and balances can approve of.

[Richard]

This is a good ruling I think.

[Lunar]

Lunar-

I guess the question is: what do you mean by "guilty"?  If they're prisoners of war, then we're not really holding them because of any "crime" in the conventional sense.  We're holding them because they fight for the other side in the war.

Maybe "guilty" would be an improper term for say, one of Saddam's troops.  However, if someone is a "terrorist" it means that they are guilty of trying to spread terror among civilians and are more than a prisoner of war.  If they are trying to attack citizens of Afghanistan, have the Afghani government charge them.  If they were plotting to blow up some skyscraper in the United States, we can charge them in the US and find them guilty.

I'm uncomfortable with treating the "War on Terror" like any other war, because it's not going to end.  To me, that's like declaring those arrested for the "War on Drugs" are prisoners of war.

[Bono]

I'm uncomfortable with treating the "War on Terror" like any other war, because it's not going to end. 

This is the war that never ends/Yes, it goes on and on, my friend/Some people started fighting it not knowing what is was/Now they'll be fighting it forever just because/This is the war that never ends

[Citizen James]

Most of us couldn't care less about the "rights" of a bunch of blood sucking terrorists.  Like I said, Osama's laughing his ass off right now.

However, watching the Dems wet all over themselves with joy at this decision is the best thing that could have happened to the Republicans in November.  This has to be a Rove plot for sure.  I noticed Nancy Pelosi has called this decision a "triumph".  You'd think a political party that had credbility troubles on an issue like national security would be smarter than that.  However, it's been said that Nancy's not the sharpest tool in the shed.  Actually, I don't think it's lack of smarts.  I think it's just that she's spent so much time in San Fransisco, she wouldn't recognize mainstream if it bit her in the butt.

What about those who aren't blood sucking terrorists but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or are you one of those blood sucking terrorists that believes we should kill 'em all and let God sort them out?

[Mr. Morden]

Maybe "guilty" would be an improper term for say, one of Saddam's troops.  However, if someone is a "terrorist" it means that they are guilty of trying to spread terror among civilians and are more than a prisoner of war.  If they are trying to attack citizens of Afghanistan, have the Afghani government charge them.  If they were plotting to blow up some skyscraper in the United States, we can charge them in the US and find them guilty.

Are all Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan "terrorists"?  I don't know that I'd use that term.  But neither are they part of a regular army as we would think of it.  Rather, I'd say that they're combatants in an unconventional war.  So I guess whatever the law says should happen to such characters is what should happen.  But I'm still unclear on what exactly that is.  Surely this kind of situation has come up before, and there must be some kind of precedent, as the world has seen many unconventional conflicts in which one or both sides doesn't belong to any kind of "army" or wear a uniform.

[agcatter]

Citizen,

Wrong place at the wrong time?  Yeah, that's it.  They were just spending quality time with their kids in the park when the mean ol US military came along out of nowhere and cuffed em for nothing.

Hey Dems, run on justice for terrorists in November.  It's a winner.  LMAO

[Citizen James]

Citizen,

Wrong place at the wrong time?  Yeah, that's it.  They were just spending quality time with their kids in the park when the mean ol US military came along out of nowhere and cuffed em for nothing.

Hey Dems, run on justice for terrorists in November.  It's a winner.  LMAO

Did it ever occur to you that flaunting international conventions helps our enemies.  Heck, they don't even have to make up stories, we actually brazenly violate the same rules we used to stand for.  Why leave secret prisons outside the view of the red cross only to totalitarian regimes like China, when we can act like them and make the ugly things our enemies claim about us true.

But, who cares about doing the right thing, or about having a strong and respectable nation, when you have elections to win and national treasuries to raid.

And if we're so certain that they are guilty of crimes - wouldn't a court trial be a slam dunk for the ideals we stand for? 

But if your party is more important to you than your nation, that's your loss.

[agcatter]

No, my NATION is more important than the terrorists.

Interesting that you should mention the Red Cross.  Yeah, the very organization that asked us to cover up the windows into the Gitmo cells so the Prisoners" could "have their" privacy"  Three promptly used their privacy to hang themselves.  Gee, damned if you do and damned if you don't.  Oh well.

As far as abiding by conventions,  since when did Al Quida become a signee of the Geneva Conventions?  Certainly not with this Supreme Court decision since that part of Stevens opinion didn't get a majority to sign on.

Nope, let them rot in prison.  We should get around to trying them around 2030.  I hope Turbin Dirbin and the rest of the Dems in Congress throw a fit about it.  Then we can have the American people make a clear choice on what they truly believe is "the right thing to do".

[nlm]

agcatter,

What is that you think the implications of this SCOTUS ruling are? Having read the ruling and your comments in this thread I'm having a hard time drawings some sort of correlation between the two.

[Nym90]

I support this decision. Everyone should have the right to a trial rather than being held indefinitely without being charged with a crime. If they are truly guilty, and I believe the vast majoirty of them certainly are, we should have absolutely no trouble getting convictions.

Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms we afford everyone, even those we despise. This ruling strikes a huge blow against the what the terrorists want to accomplish, which is to strip America of these freedoms and turn us into a police state similar to Arab dictatorships.

[agcatter]

Actually, nothing will change.  The Congress will now introduce legislation providing  the president with the authority to do what he wanted to do in the first place - namely, set up military tribunals to try and punish the Gitmo 400.  Specter (a definite RINO and definitely no conservative) actually introduced such legislation tonight.

Oh, the left will scream bloody murder about trampling on the Geneva Convention and such rot.  Barbara Boxer will have her usual meltdown.  However the ACLU and left in general will not get to experience their little wet dream of Ramsey Clark tying up terrorist cases in federal courts for years and years or, better yet, some ambulance chaser llike John Edwards suing the government on behalf of Abdul or Mohammed and making these butchers rich on taxpayer money.

I'm actually very anxious to see if Feingold and company are dumb enough to oppose such legislation.  Based on past actions, I have little doubt that they are.

Rove is indeed an evil genius, but he could never pull it off without the cooperation of the Democrats in Congress.  Poor dumb leftoids, they just can't help themselves.  At least their opposition will play well in the San Francisco Bay Area, Madison, Wisconsin, and Boston.  Oh well, Rove can't worry about that, too busy winning elections.

[The Duke]

I'm going to refrain from entering the policy debate here, and focus on the ruling itself.  The ruling is atrocious, there is simply no defending it.

First, Hamdan does not have standing to file a habeas petition at the Supreme Court because the Detainee Treatment Act precludes foreign nationals captured on the battlefield in war from filing such a petition.  The case should have been thrown out, and Hamdan should have been sent back to Guantanamo.  The only way one can accept the Supreme Court's ruling as valid is if one presumes that Congress didn't mean what it said when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act.

Second, the Court's majority appears to either not have read or not have understood the provisions of the Geneva Convention they invoke.  The Geneva Convetions do not apply to non-signatories.  Al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, so the only way they could be eligible for Geneva protections is if they accept and apply the treaty's provisions.  They have clearly rejected and ignored the treaty's provisions by deliberately targeting civilians in their attacks and beheading those they capture.  Yet the Supreme Court offers them Geneva protections anyway.

Third, even if Al Qaeda did abide by the provisions of Geneva (Which they don't) they would still be ineligible for protection because the Convention specifically excludes non-uniformed personnel from its protections.  Al Qaeda wears the uniform of no nation, and therefore is not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.  The Geneva Convention clearly does not apply to Al Qaeda members like Hamdan, yet the Court absurcly asserts that Hamdan recieves its protections.

Fourth, for all their crowing about stare decisis when it comes to abortion cases, the Court seems to have no use whatsoever for precedent in this case.  With total contempt for 220 years of military law, the Supreme Court grants unprecedented priviledges to terrorists.  Never in American history have we granted hearings where those captured on the battlefield could contest their status, and there has never been nor is there now a compelling reason to grant them such a hearing.

This is a ruling totally divorced from reality, utterly contradicting the text of the laws at issue.  And no wonder, after all the five justices who ignore the plain text of acts of Congress and international treaties in Hamdan are the same justices who recklessly issued a de facto re-write of the Fifth Amendment in Kelo.  These people just don't care what the law says, they just impose their own policy preferences on the country.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The Dept. of Defense may ignore this ruling. Court rulings are only for Democrats to obey.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30gitmo.html?hp&ex=1151640000&en=08b8cb725164ea86&ei=5094&partner=homepage