And in Reason Online, more on the Military Commission Act.
The new trial procedures, though problematic in some ways, are a clear improvement over the Bush administration’s original rules, which the Supreme Court overturned because they were not authorized by Congress. But these protections are available only to the detainees the government decides to try. The rest, including the vast majority of current detainees, can be imprisoned indefinitely based on the findings of Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which perfunctorily confirm the government’s detention decisions.
The Military Commissions Act does not seem to require even this pro forma review. It says an “unlawful enemy combatant” is a person who is not part of a country’s uniformed armed forces but “who has engaged in hostilities or has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” It does not say who makes that determination or what evidence, if any, is required.
Alternatively, an unlawful enemy combatant is anyone so labeled by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which can apply its own definition. The act apparently would permit a tribunal to decide a detainee must be an unlawful enemy combatant because he’s named Muhammad or because he has a beard.
The law bars detainees who are not U.S. citizens from challenging their detention in federal court, so they have no legal recourse outside the executive branch. The government can arrest “aliens,” including legal visitors and residents, and hold them indefinitely, based on nothing more than the president’s unilateral determination that they qualify as unlawful enemy combatants.
To recognize the danger of giving the executive branch this kind of unreviewable power, you need look no further than the men sent to Guantanamo Bay because they were falsely identified as Al Qaeda or Taliban hangers-on by Afghan warlords hungry for bounty money.