Clarification

I was off the mark on the Gitmo ruling (see yesterday's post Gitmo Ruled Unlawful) in stating that the judge had ruled that detainees were P.O.W.s Thanks to Justin Reyna who clarifies that the judge

...didn't order that the detainees at Guantanamo be treated as Prisoners of War. He ruled that the military must have a hearing to decide whether the detainees should be granted Prisoner of War status under the Geneva Convention. The positive effects of this ruling [are]n't that the majority of the detainees will be treated as P.O.W.s, but that the rights of these prisoners are gradually being recognized. There is a clear path being blazed by the courts through the muck of the Administration that "Enemy Combatants" are not alien to basic freedoms prized by our court system. The U.S. has gone through this same mess before during W.W. II with hundreds of thousands of Asian detainees in California and thankfully the courts still recognize that our country's freedoms have roots in judicial principles, whether civil, criminal, or military, maintaining that fundamental rights cannot be suppressed even in critical times of war. If the Administration is left with a blank check to do whatever they want, then our country will resemble tyrannical regimes like Saddam Hussein's dictatorship where the process is simply labeling someone an enemy and they are punished without any fair process.