DOUBLE STANDARD? When John Cusack bombards his girlfriend's home with music, it's cute. When the CIA uses a boombox, it's torture.

So, a pretentious group of musicians is upset that their music is being used to torment America’s most dangerous enemies?

And now they want the U.S. government to release an official song list?

I can’t imagine that such a document actually exists. Are we supposed to believe that CIA and Pentagon interrogators around the world were issued official playlists by some audio-torture DJ?

It’s a safe bet that the music choices used to keep terrorists awake 24/7 were straight from a gazillion different iPods.

However, there WAS an official songlist when the U.S. Army flushed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega out of hiding in 1989. The psychological warfare guys surrounding the Vatican Embassy during “Operation Just Cause” called in their requests to Army Radio.

How retro.

Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" made this dictator's skin crawl!

THE OFFICIAL 1989 MUSIC TORTURE SONG LIST FOR NORIEGA

Straight from U.S. Army records, here is a portion of the radio playlist used to annoy Manuel Noriega.

1. (You’ve Got) Another Thing Coming — Judas Priest
2. All I Want is You — U2
3. Big Shot — Billy Joel
4. Born to Run — Bruce Springsteen
5. Bring Down the Hammer — Georgia Satellites
6. Don’t Look Back — Boston
7. Don’t Fear the Reaper — Blue Oyster Cult
8. Eat My Shorts — Rick Dees
9. Feel a Whole Lot Better (When You’re Gone) — Tom Petty
10. Give It Up — KC and the Sunshine Band
11. Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down — Paul Young
12. Guilty — Bonham
13. Hang ‘Em High — Van Halen
14. Hanging Tough — New Kids on the Block
15. I Fought The Law and the Law Won — Bobby Fuller
16. Judgment Day — Whitesnake
17. Never Gonna Give You Up — Rick Astley
18. No More Mister Nice Guy — Alice Cooper
19. Panama — Van Halen
20. Paranoid — Black Sabbath
21. Stay Hungry — Twisted Sister
22. The Party’s Over — Journey
23. The Star Spangled Banner — Jimi Hendrix
24. They’re Coming to Take Me Away — Henry VIII
25. Time is on My Side — Rolling Stones
26. Wanted Dead or Alive — Bon Jovi
27. We Didn’t Start the Fire — Billy Joel
28. We Gotta Get Out of This Place — The Animals
29. Who Will You Run To? — Heart

Who knew that Billy Joel and New Kids on the Block would ever serve their country so effectively?

Wanna see the full list of Noriega torture tunes?  CLICK HERE.

If you didn’t believe me before about Guantanamo and why it was a remarkably dumb idea, will you believe these guys?

From Politico:

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.

“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox [pictured above], a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”

Also, the following quote in particular is gratifying to hear, especially when people act as if terrorists are somehow the most dangerous criminals in the history of the world and their presence in a community would somehow make it ridiculously unsafe…

“Can you imagine getting a terrorist from Guantanamo convicted and put in a federal penitentiary in your town?” Maddox asked. “Have you ever checked who the hell’s in there already? Have any of them gotten out? The person who we’re putting in is probably a heck of lot less dangerous than most of them who are already in there.”

Agreed. Now it’s time to convince the rest of the US.

Let’s get started…

A bombshell story broke today about the Obama administration drafting an executive order that could be used to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely.

First, here’s the story…

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the military facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the prison by the president’s January deadline.

But the administration denied the report and the Washington Post has since revised it…

An administration official told AFP that no such draft order existed, though internal deliberations were taking place on how to deal with those inmates who could not be released or tried in civilian courts.

The source said that a task force established by the president was not due to present its recommendations until July, and that the administration would then work with Congress to find a solution to the conundrum.

The official was reacting to a report by The Washington Post that said the Obama administration “has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.”

The newspaper later revised its report to say the administration “is drafting” the executive order, among other changes.

So, seriously, who’s lying?

Listen, I have no doubt that people have at least discussed the idea of keeping indefinite detention on the table because that’s just debate. But that’s a lot different than drafting an executive order. Did Wash Post jump the gun on this one or is the Obama administration actually considering indefinite detention as an option?

Also, after the last 8 years, how is indefinite detention a sticky subject in Congress? I thought it had been long since established that Americans didn’t approve of this practice. Did I miss something in the past 6 months?

That’s right. We locked him up when he was 14 years old.

End result?

No evidence could be found that he was an enemy combatant.

More from BBC:

After Mr Gharani was arrested at a mosque, his lawyer said he was accused by the US of being a member of al-Qaeda in 1998, when he would have been only 11.

The US authorities had also alleged that Mr Gharani stayed at an al-Qaeda-affiliated guest house in Afghanistan, fought in the battle of Tora Bora following the US-led invasion, and served as a courier for senior al-Qaeda operatives.

Anybody want to bet we don’t pay this guy anything for the time we stole from him? Or that you won’t hear about this in the mainstream media?

Shameful stuff.

npr link to music torture…

This is Mike Fritz and David Murdock from ANP.

Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation.

Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At a recent Judiciary subcommittee hearing investigating the torture memos, Graham mounted a feisty defense of Jay Bybee, John Yoo and the lawyers who provided legal cover for detainee abuse.

This performance sent producer Mike Fritz back to the ANP archives to confirm that this was indeed the same Lindsey Graham we remembered from the summer, and sure enough, it was. As this video reveals, same guy – different message.

Click to view the whole story at Huffington Post.

Just when I didn’t think I could be shocked by the previous administration’s decisions…

From Wash Post:

President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.

Yes, I continue to be awed by the hubris displayed by Bush and company. Because the idea that we would detainee people indefinitely without legal counsel and never even worry about building a comprehensive case against them is INSANE.

I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY??? How did they think they could possibly justify this behavior?

As hilzoy puts it…

It takes, well, a special kind of administration to detain people for years on end without bothering to assemble case files on them. I’m just glad they’re finally gone.

If Guantanamo takes a lot longer to close than previously thought, THIS is the reason, not because it’s complicated to figure out that people we capture (or kidnap) have to be prosecuted and either sent to prison or let go.

More as it develops…

New Red Sox outfielder Rocco Baldelli, who left the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a free agent after battling chronic injuries, just took out a newspaper ad in the St. Petersburg Times thanking the fans for their warmth and support.

C-L-A-S-S-Y.

Regardless of whether his mother reminded him to send a thank you note or not, Baldelli cemented his Good Guy Legacy.

His note:

Baldelli is the antithesis of ungrateful Guantanamo Bay prisoners, who today slapped their greatest friend in the face. Within the first 48 hours on the job, probably before he’s even looked around every room in the White House, Barack Obama signed an order to shut down Gitmo and its worldwide franchise of lesser-branded foreign prisons.

Did the Gitmo Alumni Association take out a full page ad in the Washington Post or Fidel Castro’s Granma newspaper? Nope.

According to Reuters, freed Gitmo veterans scoff that the upcoming closure is “too little, too late.”

“The prison in Guantanamo is a flagrant violation of international and American laws,” said Lal Gul Lal, the head of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, an independent non-governmental organization.

“If Obama’s administration wants to get rid of the criticism and wants to implement justice then it should hand over to their respective countries all the prisoners it has in various prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” he said. “If that does not happen the closure of Guantanamo will have no meaning.”

Yup, either we free every thug right now OR the Gitmo shutdown will have “no meaning.” Precious stuff. I’m guessing this guy perfected his rhetoric on the Student Union steps at UMass-Amherst.

But back to the classy trend of professional baseball players writing thank you notes.

Kerry Wood also just wrote one to Chicago Cubs fans. Fellow pitcher C.C. Sabathia wrote one to Cleveland Indians fans. Barry Zito did the same for Oakland A’s fans a few years back — even though he was just going a few miles to play for the San Francisco Giants.

I wonder what baseball guru Alyssa Milano would have to say about this resurgence of politeness and etiquette. I also wonder about Milano’s position on Gitmo.

Perhaps more important is the faint hope that more paid thank you notes from ballplayers could save the struggling newspaper industry — a theory put forth by clever Tampa Bay cheerleader Jonah Keri.

Keri, editor of Baseball Between the Numbers, thinks that Tampa Bay is going to finish ahead of Boston in 2009. He’s almost as delusional as those ungrateful Gitmo inmates.

(Donklephant contributor Darren Garnick can be reached at www.CultureSchlock.com)

Also, the words “we don’t torture” will finally be true.

From NY Times:

The orders, which are the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

There are still a lot of legal questions to be answered, but I can’t help but think that they’re not as complicated as many would have us believe. The only reason there’s any complications in the first place is we had a “kidnap first, ask questions later” policy. And that ultimately resulted in hundreds of folks being held for years without access to legal counsel and then released with a pat on the back and an “Our bad!” by the government.

No, the only potentially tough question is “Where do the real criminals go?” Murtha has already said he’d take them so let’s give them to him. It’s not like these folks are radioactive and we characterize them like as such at our own peril because we elevate their status and legend. They’re just people who may or may not have committed a crime and they should be treated as such.

As promised, this is one of the first orders of business. And given that we eventually freed the majority of those we kidnapped and held indefinitely without access to legal counsel, this move is yet another signal that America is starting a new chapter.

From AP:

The U.S. moved Tuesday to halt the Guantanamo Bay war crimes trials, filing a late-night motion to suspend proceedings until President Barack Obama’s administration completes a review of the system for prosecuting suspected terrorists.

The motion, filed at the direction of Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will be considered early Wednesday by the military judge hearing the case of five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the motion, a U.S. military prosecutor says the “interests of justice” would be served by a suspension in all pending cases because a review of the system by the Obama administration may result in significant changes.

“The interests of justice served by granting the requested continuance outweigh the interests of both the public and the accused in a prompt trial,” prosecutor Clay Trivett said in the motion.

Trivett wrote that the motion was filed at the direction of the president and defense secretary.

The suspension would be for 120 days while the administration develops a new way to try enemy combatant cases.

More as it develops…

They finally admit it…

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

I can hear the folks over at RedState now…”But, but, but…what if a nuclear bomb were about to go off and Jack B-, I mean the CIA needed to find out where it was so they could diffuse it?”

Is it just me or is the fact that we actually had to have a debate about whether it’s okay to torture people is evidence of how far off track we’ve gone?

Obviously I’m not suggesting that our actions are anywhere close to being as bad as the terrorists, but one of the ways they’ll “win” is if we adopt their tactics. The Bush administration fell right into this trap and lost a massive amount of credibility as a result…as well they should.

Let’s hope our new POTUS is smarter.

I’m not exactly sure what legal solution Obama will be applying to the enemy combatants currently being detained, but it seems that anything is better than the nothingburger they have in place currently.

From Wash Post:

A former military prosecutor said in a declaration filed in federal court yesterday that the system of handling evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay is so chaotic that it is impossible to prepare a fair and successful prosecution.

Darrel Vandeveld, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, filed the declaration in support of a petition seeking the release of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who has been held at the military prison in Cuba for six years. Jawad was a juvenile when he was detained in Kabul in 2002 after a grenade attack that severely wounded two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and their interpreter.

Vandeveld, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the lead prosecutor against Jawad until he asked to be relieved of his duties last year, citing a crisis of conscience. He said the case has been riddled with problems, including alleged physical and psychological abuse of Jawad by Afghan police and the U.S. military, as well as reliance on evidence that was later found to be missing, false or unreliable.

But the military is saying this is a case of sour grapes…

“I am happy to respond under oath to any of the allegations,” Col. Lawrence Morris, chief military prosecutor, said in an e-mailed statement. Vandeveld, he said, “was disappointed when I did not choose him to become a team leader, and he asked to resign shortly thereafter, never having raised an ethical concern during the 9 months I supervised him. I relied on his representations to me about Jawad and other cases I entrusted to him (which included his advocacy of a 40-year sentence for Mr. Jawad the week before he departed).”

Obviously Vandeveld denies the charge, and one has to think that the evidence is on his side.

But regardless of whether he’s telling the truth or not, what has gone on at Guantanamo is a text book case of America acting first and asking questions later. Because there is no good legal justification for what we’re doing right now. I know we continue to try and justify it as what we would do during war time, but this isn’t a war. It’s a constant struggle against Islamic extremism…and that’s going to go on forever. Sorry to deliver the bad news to those of you who thought we could get rid of terrorism, but we can’t. We can only hope to minimize it into a nuisance.

Still, I heard Pat Buchanan talk last night about the WoT as if it were a war with a definitive end, and I just continue to shake my head and wonder why incredibly smart people somehow don’t understand that you can’t declare “war” on a tactic. Well, you can, but you lose all credibility eventually when it becomes obvious that your logic has a massive hole in it.

One thing’s for sure…there will be more Vandevelds once Guantanamo is closed and it’s time to write about what really happened at this place. And that’s a history I hope we never forget.

But it will happen.

Obama said as much on This Week today:

“I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do,” Obama said in an exclusive “This Week” interview with George Stephanopoulos, his first since arriving in Washington.

“It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,” the president-elect explained. “Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.”

But Obama said unequivocally that it will close. “I don’t want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.”

I think, ultimately, the biggest challenge will be where to put the very dangerous folks. Because I’m imagining you’ll have a lot of “not in my back yard” talk.

Perhaps Alaska? :-)

I’ve written at length about my opinions of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, etc., but the idea that people will vigorously defend policies that put a completely innocent man through 6 years of hell still leaves me completely baffled.

Seriously. This is one of those issues for me where there’s absolutely zero common ground because I simply can’t understand how anybody can justify the following.

From NY Times:

When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants.

In November, a Pakistani surgeon operated on his ear, physical therapists were working on lower back problems and a psychiatrist was trying to wean him off the drugs he carried around in a white, plastic shopping bag.

The maladies, said Mr. Iqbal, 31, a professional reader of the Koran, are the result of a gantlet of torture, imprisonment and interrogation for which his Washington lawyer plans to sue the United States government.

What’s even more disgusting is how he was arrested, found to be on little value and yet we still detained him…

Mr. Iqbal was arrested early in 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia, after boasting to members of an Islamic group that he knew how to make a shoe bomb, according to two senior American officials who were in Jakarta at the time.

Mr. Iqbal now denies ever having made the statement, but two days after his arrest, he said, the Central Intelligence Agency transferred him to Egypt. He was later shifted to the American prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and ultimately to Guantánamo Bay. [...]

After Mr. Iqbal was picked up in Jakarta and interrogated for two days, American officials generally concluded that he was a braggart, a “wannabe,” and should be released, one of the senior American officials in Jakarta said. “He was a talker,” the senior American official said. “He wanted to believe he was more important than he was.”

Yes, everything changed after 9/11, including, unfortunately, our sense of right and wrong.

In any event, I hope Iqbal wins his lawsuit. Because it’ll hopefully embarrass us enough so we’ll put a stop to these practices once and for all.

This is Lagan from ANP,

We sat down with James Risen, the New York Times national security corespondent who broke the domestic wiretapping stories, to talk about the dilemmas Obama faces with the unparalleled executive power he will inherit.

Dick Cheney recently said that Obama would appreciate all of the power they are handing over, but Obama has railed against some of the Bush administration’s policies such as the warrantless wiretapping that Risen helped uncover.

A few days after this interview was filmed, one of Risen’s key sources, Thomas Tamm, was featured on the cover of Newsweek as “The Fed Who Blew the Whistle.” Risen spoke with us about the rise in executive power during Bush’s tenure and how the media failed to be vigilant in the wake of 9/11.

From his perch at the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James Risen has been at the forefront of uncovering some of the Bush administration’s worst abuses of power. As a result, he has been hauled before a grand jury and pressured by the government to name his anonymous sources.

I still can’t believe we justified holding people indefinitely without access to council or hope for trial. And the following case shows just how egregious that practice was since 4 out of the 5 men ordered released weren’t even “enemy combatants.”

From Wash Post:

For the first time, a federal judge ordered the release yesterday of detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay after evaluating and rejecting government allegations that five men were dangerous enemy combatants.

The government had alleged that the men planned to travel to Afghanistan to attack U.S. forces. But U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that in a series of closed hearings in recent weeks, the Justice Department had not proved that five of the six Algerian detainees at the Cuban facility were enemy combatants under the government’s own definition.

Leon ordered them released “forthwith” and said the government should engage in diplomatic efforts to find them new homes. In an unusual moment, he also pleaded with Justice Department lawyers not to appeal his order, noting that the men have been imprisoned since shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

By the way, 20 years from now what do you think we’ll say about Guantanamo Bay and the “war” on terrorism?

One of the biggest symbols of post 9/11 American hubris is set to vanish.

Good:

WASHINGTON – President-elect Obama’s advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice. [...]

Under plans being put together in Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren’t final.

The plan being developed by Obama’s team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.

Supported by legal scholars on both sides of the aisle but opposed by Republican politicians? Sounds good to me.

More as it develops…

Usually it’s the cartoonist that is tortured, but the CIA got a hold of my cartoon and it disappeared for awhile.  Thank god it survived and I was able to recover it.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t like to talk much and tends to curl up in the corner of my studio. Wash Post article

Will’s complaint is as much about McCain’s hyperbole as it is about McCain’s opposition to the ruling. As Will notes, this is not a clear-cut matter and people of good will can certainly disagree. Will begins by suggestion some court decisions far worse than the most recent one and then duly notes the problems in the decision:

Critics, including Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent, are correct that the court’s decision clouds more things than it clarifies. Is the “complete and total” U.S. control of Guantanamo a solid-enough criterion to prevent the habeas right from being extended to other U.S. facilities around the world where enemy combatants are or might be held? Are habeas rights the only constitutional protections that prevail at Guantanamo? If there are others, how many? All of them? If so, can there be trials by military commissions, which permit hearsay evidence and evidence produced by coercion?

But Will also notes that habeas rights are a pretty essential part to maintaining a restrained government.

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America’s Constitution, which limits Congress’ power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees’ habeas claims?

One of the more difficult questions we face in this war on terror is how to handle our prisoners at Guantanamo and, more generally, how to handle all current and future terrorists we capture. Do we treat the whole matter as part of our criminal justice system and have the military hand over all detainees to federal law enforcement? Or do we develop something more comprehensive that acknowledges this conflict is a little more broad and complex than some federal sting operation?

We must balance our need to protect our nation and citizens with our moral obligation to ensure we are not imprisoning innocent men and women. While I’m concerned with the logic behind the Supreme Court’s ruling as well as the fuzzy precedent it has created, I have to agree with George Will that granting habeas rights is an understandable position, in that it sets the legal bar at a bare minimum without de facto granting detainees full access to our court system.

Is it the best compromise? No – court-created compromises are usually more imperfect than even the imperfect compromises of legislatures. This is why Congress should now step in and rework the rules to accommodate habeas rights without junking the tribunal system which took so long to create. Instead of spouting off, McCain should use his role in the Senate to make the best out of the Court’s complicated ruling. But I guess in election year politics, “energizing the base” with hyperbolic rhetoric is more important than real governance.

From Swampland comes this transcript of McCain’s statements during a town hall…

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn’t torture any prisoners, that we didn’t mistreat them, that we abided by the Geneva Conventions, which applies to all prisoners.

But we also made it perfectly clear, and I won’t go through all the legislation we passed, and the prohibition against torture, but we made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have.

And my friends there are some bad people down there. There are some bad people. So now what are we going to do. We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases.

Oh…the horror! Habeas suits! Yeah, our legal system will really get crushed under the weight of all of those…

The thing missing from his remarks is the idea that these people aren’t just getting the chance to file frivolous lawsuits…they’re getting the chance to file ANY lawsuit because now they actually have access to legal counsel.

Of course Republicans don’t like this because they see enemy combatants as defacto prisoners of war, captured from some mythical country of “Terroristas”, but this isn’t a war against a tactic we can’t detain people indefinitely and deny them access to legal counsel. It just doesn’t work that way. Either they committed a crime we can try them for or they didn’t.

Also, another potential positive to emerge from this decision is now we’ll have to make absolutely sure that the people we’re snatching can actually be tried and convicted. So this ruling may actually put LESS of a burden on us in the long run.

One of the worst decisions in history? Not by a long shot.