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.

We interrupt our calm review of the electoral situation in various other nations to take a look at something more specific and a bit less calm.

Today, the US Administration made perfectly, brazenly clear what its principles are in persuing Mr Bush's War, and they can be summarised more or less thusly:

• We don't torture. No, really. Honest. Although it may depend on how you define 'torture'.
• But we do abduct people we've decided are 'enemy combattants' and take them places we're not going to tell you about.
• What we're doing is legal by US law, and that's the only law we actually care about.
• These people have information. No, we don't know what information they have—if we knew that, we wouldn't need to...um...talk to them
• This is the kicker The information we've pried...er...extract...er...obtained from these people has helped save European as well as American lives, and therefore the Europeans should shut the fuck up.

That, in a nutshell, is the message that Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice is carrying on her trip to Europe. The very last part in particular. Not, "Hrm, OK, I see you have some concerns here. You're all democratic nations and your demos are pretty pissed, so maybe we should talk about this." But, "Shut the fuck up, and tell your people to shut the fuck up. We're the Global Police and we're keeping you safe."

Now, I'm not known for being much of an internationalist. I don't believe there's any such thing as international law, I don't believe the UN is much more than a corrupt money sink that hosts an occasionally useful debating club, and I don't believe that all uses of force are inherently bad or wrong.

But how in hell can we claim to want to spread democracy when we're doing everything we can to suppress it, manipulate it, or discredit it?!