Judge Orders Release of 17 Guantanamo Prisoners

Forget tonight's presidential debate. The big news has to be the federal court ruling to release 17 Guantanamo detainees by the end of the week.

The Bush administration has, predictably, expressed disappointment and concern over the ruling, despite the fact that, according to the NYT article, the government was no longer attempting to prosecute a case against the men in questions as enemy combatants. It remains to be seen whether the government will seek to delay or interfere with Judge Ricardo Urbina's ruling.

Says lawyer P. Sabin Willet, for the detainees: “We’ve had so many hearings where we didn’t even get half a loaf, we got a little crumb . . . I’m emotionally unprepared for this.”

War Crimes and Missteps

Let me see if I get this right. In 2006 the Bush Administration doesn't feel it has the latitude necessary to prosecute detainees of the "Global War on Terror" who are currently held at Guantanamo, and introduces the Military Commissions Act. This act effectively sidesteps questions of human rights and habeus corpus and gives the administration the go-ahead to try detainees outside the framework of the traditional military court-martial.

Yesterday, however, two military judges reviewing the cases of two detainees scheduled to appear on war crimes charges before military commissions dismissed those charges due to linguistic technicalities regarding the terms "enemy combatant" and "unlawful enemy combatant."

So even when the Bush Administration writes the rules it still can't seem to abide by them. Here's hoping there are more Americans who continue to see the failures of the Bush Administration's rhetoric and logic and who will act to restore credibility where much has been lost.

Jose Padilla: U.S. Citizen/Detainee

When the government can't afford to lose, can a defendent (and U.S. citizen) get a fair trial? Jose Padilla has been in jail since May 2002. Five years later he finally gets his day in court.