Why the SCOTUS Guantanamo Decision Is Meaningless
Lots of noise is being noised about the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision ruling the military tribunals contrary to military law and the Geneva Convention. Some folks seem to be under the impression that this means the end of Gitmo, or that the Administration has been told that everything it's doing is Bad and Wrong.
It isn't, and it hasn't.
What the Administration has been told -- and admittedly quite sternly -- is that it acted without the support of the law. That is, Congress never told the Bush administration it could set up tribunals like this. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not contain any definition that can be applied here. It's also been told that its information gathering methods are a violation of the Geneva Conventions and that the Conventions do apply to these detainees.
The latter is somewhat significant. It means that all the various ways the Administration has twisted its words and meanings to make it sound like these people were not deserving of Geneva Convention treatment is bullshit. That doesn't mean they'll stop doing it, because the SCOTUS has no enforcement power (you knew that, right?). It just means that they can no longer use that particular argument.
The former, however, is meaningless. Now, the administration will go to the Republican-controlled Congress and say, "Fix it". Congress will fix it the same way they're fixing the illegal-wiretapping problem -- by making it legal despite the fact that it's Bad and Wrong. And then, the Administration will go back to doing what it's been doing.
So, you see, no real victory here. Some stern words for an Administration we already think are Bad and Wrong. But put away the brass bands and the confetti, because exactly nothing will change.
