Saturday, July 08, 2006
Bush Spinning Supreme Court Ruling
The following pronouncement looks like someone is trying to pull a fast one:
In his most detailed comments to date on the Supreme Court's rejection of his decision to put detainees on trial before military commissions, President Bush said Friday that the court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"It didn't say we couldn't have done -- couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantanamo -- whether or not we should have used Guantanamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantanamo, the decision I made."
Mr. Bush's remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration's policies in the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and violated international law.
The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantanamo Bay to house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try detainees for war crimes.
