Faulty Strategy on Detainees Costs Bush

Re “High Court Says Detainees Have Right to Hearing,” June 29: The Bush administration’s litigation strategy in regard to the Guantanamo case has, in the end, only weakened U.S. security and important presidential discretion in time of war. Had the administration taken a reasonable position and simply afforded the detainees in Guantanamo a limited hearing before military officers, I highly doubt the court would have ruled the way it did. But instead the administration forced the court’s hand, essentially telling the court: It’s either no process, or you figure it out. A responsible administration would have presented the court with an alternative to its broad ruling that non-U.S. citizen detainees caught abroad on the battlefield have a right to be heard in U.S. civilian courts. This administration’s lack of foresight is shocking.

Jonathan Steinsapir

Santa Monica

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Your June 29 editorial, “It’s Called Democracy,” made a fundamental mistake in vote counting in declaring that only “four justices” agreed that Congress’ resolution authorizing the use of military force provided the president the authority to detain citizens. Rather, as your news article correctly described, five justices ascribed to that view. That is a result of the opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Though Thomas stood alone on the scope of the president’s detention authority, he provided the crucial fifth vote to create a majority holding on the meaning of the resolution. In Thomas’ own words, “Although the president very well may have inherent authority to detain those arrayed against our troops, I agree with the plurality that we need not decide that question because Congress has authorized the president to do so.”

Thus, while your editorial decries the fact that four justices agreed with this view, its writer will surely be even more disillusioned to learn that the Bush administration’s “tortured” reading of the congressional resolution actually garnered a majority of Supreme Court votes.

M.K.B. Darmer

Associate Professor of Law

Chapman University

Orange

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Your editorial described how the Supreme Court has rejected the Bush administration’s view of its entitlement to arrest and detain anyone it chooses without access to legal advice or the right to a trial. But you also illuminated a subtext that -- much like the crawl under a CNN broadcast -- has been scrolling beneath the surface of thousands of Op-Ed pieces and editorials since Sept. 11, 2001.

Though President Bush seeks to convince us to trust him, in one sorry instance after another he has appeared to demonstrate his own fear and that of the people who advise him. Such fear, the Supreme Court seems to be saying, is no reason to “repeal the Bill of Rights.”

With its rulings, the Supreme Court may have created an infinitely longer-lasting piece of history than the early hand-over of power by our government to the Iraqis.

Joan Walston

Santa Monica

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Now that our Supreme Court has decided that we taxpayers should spend millions more dollars and many years of litigation for the 600 or so prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, I move that we just pay each one $10,000 and fly him home to Afghanistan and be done with it.

It would be a lot cheaper than what the future bodes once legions of attorneys get involved and we are still housing all of them as their cases crawl through the courts.

Jackie Warner

Orange

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It seems odd that the issue of whether or not we are “at war” did not surface in the Supreme Court decisions concerning the detainees.

So far as I know, Congress, which has the sole power to “declare war” under the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), has never done so. It appears that the president has usurped that power.

Herbert S. Stern

Camarillo