Shorter Supreme Court: “Y’know, B, that military tribunal thing doesn’t sound right to us either”…

The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion in the case, called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recused himself [having participated in the appeals court ruling concerning the case prior to reaching the Supreme Court].

I could care less about the “international law” part, but the general tone being set makes sense.  Since the Court doesn’t have the authority to strike down the entire thing, they struck down the keystone to it, the rest will fall on its own.

The military tribunals bit always sounded to me like an inbetween measure, a result of the make-it-up-as-we-go tactics of the “war on terror” — “they deserve trials, but not fair ones because we think they’re guilty”.  That there’s even the wiggle room for some form of court proceedings during hostilities rather than afterwards shows why it is inaccurate to call this whole mess a war in the first place.