Supreme Court to Hear Detainee Case: Military Tribunals Should Be Stopped Until Court Decides the Issue

Osama bin-Laden's former driver, now a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has succeeded in getting his case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

At issue is whether the U.S. military can conduct military tribunals for captured enemy fighters.

It's really bad when on of bin-Laden's associates correctly points out that the tribunals are against our own laws that spring from the Constitution and from our own Declaration of Independence.

It should be pointed out that President Bush has the right as Commander-in-Chief to send American troops into battle and to wage war with the consent of Congress.

However, he does NOT have the right to order the military to try foreign nationals unless they harm U.S. troops. Under international law, he is required to hand over terrorists to the governments whose territory or people were harmed, or to turn over suspects who harm foreign nationals to the nations that the victims are from. That very precedent allowed Pakistan to turn over Daniel Pearl's killer to U.S. authorities.

President Bush has chosen not to do that. Instead, he has the U.S. military conduct secret tribunals in the name of not only U.S. nationals who have been harmed by the terrorists overseas, but also Iraqi, British, Polish, Italian, Spanish and other coalition nations whose soldiers have died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

This is in spite of the fact that these nations would rather try the suspects themselves, or would rather have these suspects turned over to an international tribunal, thereby avoiding possible U.S. death penalties, which they also oppose.

The fact is that President Bush has exceeded his Constitutional authority -again- and now the Court has to remind him where the line is.

By establishing his own court system and bypassing the civilian court system, the President is indeed violating the separation of powers clause of the Constitution. It is Congress's Constitutional duty to establish courts that are inferior to the Supreme Court, not the President's.

Limbaugh is avoiding this topic by saying that this argument is a liberal attempt to weaken the President's ability to wage war against terrorists when it actually isn't.

It's an attempt to reinforce parts of the Constitution that are being assaulted by the current Administration.