Fish or Cut Bait by Linda Greenhouse
It was the most important military commission case to come before any court in the more than seven years since the Supreme Court invalidated the Bush administration’s first effort to set up military commissions to try Guantánamo detainees for war crimes. . .
In other words, what I witnessed in the appeals court’s grand “ceremonial courtroom,” reserved for the infrequent occasions when the entire court sits en banc, was the American legal system at its best.
And yet. . .
I wonder who will be able to extract clarity from this mess. The argument left me with the overwhelming sense of how much time has been wasted here. . .
That outcome, so far, is all the military commission system has to show for itself. The Bahlul case may not be a test case in the usual meaning of that term. But it’s a test: of legal judgment, of political will. It’s a test that the system, one that so many talented people are struggling honorably and mightily to uphold, has failed.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/fish-or-cut-bait/?hp
