The Month of Stinging Rebukes

The Bush administration is now Zero-for-June in stinging rebukes over its extralegal efforts to circumvent the American legal system in order to try so-called enemy combatants.

The bottom line is that despite its chest thumping, the administration has yet to complete a single trial involving this detritus from the Global War on Terror.

The latest rebuke, the third of the month, came today when a divided three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Bush White House had overstepped the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism and ordered the Pentagon to release Ali Al-Marri, who has been held for six years as an enemy combatant.

Wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz:

"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.

"We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic."

The government claimed that Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar and the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant, was a sleeper cell agent for Al Qaeda while studying computer science at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

The only other man held on the mainland was Jose Padilla, was transferred to the civilian criminal justice system last year to avoid what was expected to be a rebuke by the Supreme Court if it conducted a review of his treatment in the military detention system set up after the 9/11 attacks. Padilla is now on trial on terrorism charges in federal court in Miami.

Last week, two military judges – repeat, military judges – suggested in rulings that the detention system was so fundamentally corrupt that it should be abolished and a new system put in place.

Make no mistake. Some of these guys are really bad dudes and should be tried and convicted. That simply has not happened because of the Bush administration's adamant refusal to hew to the Rule of Law.

I have a better idea: Get ride of the whole damned system.

More here on today's ruling.