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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (340403)	1/8/2003 5:38:07 PM
From: Srexley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Look Spirit Boy, one of your friends just lost a round in court (and Bush won one). Looks like there is still some common sense in America. story.news.yahoo.com Detention of U.S.-Born Taliban Prisoner Upheld 1 hour, 45 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the U.S. government had provided enough evidence for the continued detention of an American-born Taliban prisoner who has been branded an "enemy combatant." The unanimous three-judge panel handed a major victory to the Bush administration in a case that has become a test of the federal government's power to hold enemy combatants in the United States as part of the war against terrorism. The appeals court said a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, was wrong in ruling the government must provide more documents to justify the confinement of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan (news - web sites). The U.S. government has called him an "enemy combatant" and has held him in a U.S. military jail in Norfolk since early April, without access to a lawyer and without any charges brought against him. He has challenged the lawfulness of his confinement in a petition that the appeals court ordered dismissed. The appeals court said a two-page declaration by Michael Mobbs, special advisor to the undersecretary of defense for policy, about the circumstances of Hamdi's capture was enough by itself to justify Hamdi's detention. After U.S. officials discovered that Hamdi had been born in Louisiana, he was moved from the U.S. Navy (news - web sites) base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where other Taliban and al Qaeda detainees are being held, to Norfolk. Hamdi's parents returned from the United States to Saudi Arabia when he was a young child. Mobbs wrote in the declaration that Hamdi told U.S. military interrogators that he went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 to train with and, if necessary, fight for the Taliban. The Taliban was toppled as Afghanistan's rulers amid a U.S.-led military campaign prompted by the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), which killed about 3,000 people. CAPTURED IN 'ACTIVE COMBAT' The appeals court, based in Richmond, Virginia, and in an opinion written by Chief Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, said it was "undisputed that Hamdi was captured in a zone of active combat in a foreign theater of conflict." "We hold that the submitted declaration is a sufficient basis upon which to conclude that the commander in chief has constitutionally detained Hamdi pursuant to the war powers entrusted to him by the U.S. Constitution. No further factual inquiry is necessary or proper," he wrote. Wilkinson warned of the consequences of further factual inquiry about Hamdi's capture and his status as an "enemy combatant." "If it did not entail disclosure of sensitive intelligence," it "might require an excavation of facts buried under the rubble of war. The cost of such an inquiry in terms of the efficiency and morale of American forces cannot be disregarded," he wrote. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) applauded the ruling, saying it "reaffirms the president's authority to capture and detain individuals, such as Hamdi, who join our enemies on the battlefield to fight against America and its allies." "Detention of enemy combatants prevents them from rejoining the enemy and continuing to fight against America and its allies," he said in a statement issued by the Justice Department.