The Gitmo Nightmare
EDITORIAL The Gitmo Nightmare It’s hard to summarize a decision as long and complicated as the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling last week in Boumediene v. Bush. But we can try....
...Doesn’t the United States government exercise “complete and total control” over its military and intelligence facilities worldwide...
...And what precise form will these habeas hearings take...
...In their visceral, myopic hatred of President Bush, liberals will see the ruling as a blow to the president and not the broad, foolish, and dangerous judicial power grab it is...
...Why...
...That territory, “while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government...
...For example, Justice Kennedy wrote that in cases involving terrorist detention, “proper deference must be accorded to the political branches...
...But these slippery distinctions only raise more questions...
...The Court now says this process is inadequate...
...What standards of judgment are the courts to apply...
...Hence lawyers, judges, and leftwing interest groups will have real infl uence over the conduct of the war on terror...
...The New York Times’s editorialists wrote that “compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats” allowed Bush to deny foreign enemy combatants during wartime “the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency...
...Will they recall soldiers and intelligence agents from the fi eld to testify...
...Breathtakingly condescending...
...What happens when the available evidence does not satisfy judges who are used to adjudicating under the exclusionary rule...
...The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that non-citizens captured abroad and held in a military installation overseas—the remaining 270 or so inmates at the terrorist prison in Guant?namo Bay, Cuba— have the same constitutional right as U.S...
...citizens to challenge their detention in court...
...Furthermore, the current procedures by which a detainee’s status is reviewed—procedures fashioned in good faith and at the Court’s behest by a bipartisan congressional majority in consultation with the commander in chief during a time of war—are unconstitutional...
...Instead it piously reminded the people that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times...
...Kennedy’s answer: I’ll get back to you on that...
...Kennedy further noted that “unlike the President and some designated Members of Congress, neither the Members of this Court nor most federal judges begin the day with briefi ngs that may describe new and serious threats to our Nation and its people...
...Then he overrode them...
...Unprecedented...
...No kidding...
...The upshot is the prisoners at Camp Delta can now fi le habeas corpus petitions in U.S...
...Will they conduct discovery...
...Matthew Continetti, for the Editors...
...One day soon Bush will be gone...
...Call it the Gitmo nightmare...
...That, after all, is what some 30 released detainees seem already to have done...
...But that is precisely what Congress and the president were doing when they passed legislation laying out a process for detainee review, one that in fact addressed concerns previously raised by the Court...
...What would be adequate...
...Reckless...
...Kennedy wrote that Eisentrager had a unique set of “practical considerations,” and the United States did not have “de facto” sovereignty over Germany as it does over Guant?namo Bay...
...Will the detainees be freed, able to return to the battlefi eld...
...In his opinion, Kennedy conceded that “before today the Court has never held that non-citizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution...
...Kennedy’s sanctimony points to the ultimate tragedy of the Boumediene mess...
...They had better start, because the courts are about to be fl ooded with petitions to release terrorists sworn to America’s destruction...
...He also wrote that now the “political branches . . . can engage in a genuine debate about how best to preserve constitutional values while protecting the Nation from terrorism...
...district courts seeking reprieve...
...The Supreme Court does not worry about such things...
...Harmful...
...Will plaintiffs’ attorneys be allowed to go venue shopping and fi le their petitions in the most liberal courts in the nation...
...Give us a break...
...Will the cases be thrown out...
...Inventing rights seems to be what some of today’s Supreme Court justices do best...
...Has anyone ever argued otherwise...
...In 1950 the Court ruled in Johnson v. Eisentrager that foreign nationals held in a military prison on foreign soil (in that case, Germany) had no habeas rights...
...If so, what’s to stop foreign combatants held in those locations from asserting their habeas rights...
...But, without overruling Eisentrager, Kennedy said the Guant?namo detainees are different from the German prisoners 58 years ago...
...But thanks to the Court, we’ll still all be living the Gitmo nightmare...
...As it happens, some of the most effective arguments against Boumediene come from the decision itself...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 39
