In keeping with the myriad outrages that it has perpetrated in fighting the so-called Global War on Terror, the Bush administration has not lacked for cojones.
Congress was a mere handmaiden or not consulted at all when the White House decided to establish a parallel court system to try terror suspects, when it tossed the Geneva Conventions into the Potomac and embraced the use of torture, when it established a plan to secretly rendition suspects to the Rumsfeld Gulag, and when it twice refused to heed the Supreme Court’s warnings that these suspects could not be stripped of all constitutional rights.
But when the top court ruled in June that a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that denied Guantánamo Bay detainees the right to file habeas petitions with civilian courts for determinations as to whether they were being held illegally, the Justice Department found itself painted into a tight corner entirely of its own making.
How to handle the tricky matter of making available civilian courts to Gitmo detainees, some of whom are seriously nasty people?
What should be done with Gitmo detainees now that the whole reason for the prison for so-called enemy combatants has been undermined by the Supremes?
And pray tell what would happen if detainees whose home countries will not accept their return are released inside the U.S.?
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who has shown that his own cojones are even bigger than predecessors John Ashcroft and Albert Gonzalez in telling Congress to buzz off while the Justice Department did the White House’s bidding, suddenly has had a change of heart. Or so it would seem.
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