Posted on 06/12/2008 1:19:03 PM PDT by C19fan
I am not expert on Con law or trying to read SCOTUS decisions. I am wondering if the way the SCOTUS ruled this case was in effect during World War II, or any previous war, would the POWs captured and held in camps have the ability to sue in Federal Courts?
Then The SCOTUS has given more rights to unlawful combatants than uniformed soldiers???
I believe that the unmentioned orders in the future will be “take no prisoners”. If they get right and can testify in U S courts the G I will get the short end of the stick. Why take a chance?
Several of the assertions by the Bush Administration in this case were just simply ludicrous. The power to hold without charge should be frightening to anyone. Try to look past the specific and ask yourself how this could be abused.
The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law’s operation. And to what effect? The majority merely replaces a review system designed by the people’s representatives with a set of shapeless procedures to be defined by federal courts at some future date.
ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting
. . . this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.. . . How the detainees’ claims will be decided now that the DTA is gone is anybody’s guess. But the habeas process the Court mandates will most likely end up looking a lot like the DTA system it replaces, as the district court judges shaping it will have to reconcile review of the prisoners’ detention with the undoubted need to protect the American people from the terrorist threat—precisely the challenge Congress undertook in drafting the DTA. All that today’s opinion has done is shift responsibility for those sensitive foreign policy and national security decisions from the elected branches to the Federal Judiciary.
BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH, ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting
Yes. It's horrible.
The power to hold without charge our alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war does not frighten me.
It is being powerless to hold them that frightens me.
Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, was quoted as reacting to a United States Supreme Court ruling with the words, “[he]{[Justice Marshal] has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.
Shoot the ba$tards NOW !!!
The power to hold without charge should be frightening to anyone...
Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war were held without charges in WWII because there was nothing to charge them with. Being a soldier in an army ordered into battle is not a crime, but can we let them go to fight again? That might sound preposterous but it now seems possible if a judge decides to let them go.
Some quick background to this case can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act
In fact, it has been updated to today’s decision. Bush and Congress both passed a law to define the status of “unlawful combatants” ie) terrorists who did not fight for countries or in uniform. The result was a broadly passed “Military Commissions Act.”
The surprising thing is that the Supreme Court isn’t ruling on an unclear area of a law - the are directly declaring the recent law unconstitutional - a rather bold intervention.
That will be the SOP for now on ...
Decision by decision we are coming to the point where we must treat “enemy combatants” in exactly the same manner that we would properly treat domestic burglary suspects. We will not be permitted to hold prisoners anywhere in the world without strictly observing Miranda and giving them speedy trials in American courts with public defenders to work along with their AQ provided counsel. The answer here must be to get what information can be got from a prisoner then to turn him loose in range of some snipers or turn him over to the local government with requirements that he not be released alive.
GIs will now be subject to investigation and punishment for improper procedures in the arrest of “suspects” on the battlefield.
One or more of the dissenters should have stated they consider this decision null and void.
Of course George "no balls" Bush should have said the same thing and ordered the worst like KSM given an immediate drumhead trial and execution just to rub the SCOTUS' nose in it, but he's already caved. I hope some officer refuses to turn them over to the US Courts on the grounds that the court's order violates his oath of office.
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