Salim Ahmed Hamdan case thrown out along with Khadr

to me, this looks like a window of opportunity to force a re-opening, a thorough re-examination, and a repeal of the military commissions act, coupled with a restoration of habeas...

Defense attorneys and legal experts blamed the rush by Congress and
President Bush last year to restore the war-crimes trials after the
U.S. Supreme Court threw out the previous system, declaring it unconstitutional. In a remarkable coincidence, it was Hamdan's lawsuit that wound up in the Supreme Court.

In both of Monday's cases, the judges ruled that the new legislation says only "unlawful enemy combatants" can be tried by the military trials, known as commissions. But Khadr and Hamdan previously had been identified by military panels here only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical "unlawful" designation.

"The fundamental problem is that the law was not carefully written," said Madeline Morris, a Duke University law professor. "It was rushed through in a flurry of political pressure from the White House ... and it is quite riddled with internal contradictions and anomalies."

Prosecuting attorneys in both cases indicated they would appeal the dismissals. But the court designated to hear the appeals — known as the court of military commissions review — doesn't even exist yet, said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay.

Army Maj. Beth Kubala, spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions that organizes the trials, said "the public should make no assumption about the future of military commissions."

She said they will continue to operate openly and fairly and added that dismissals of the charges "reflect that the military judges operate independently."

She declined to comment on how the Office of Military Commissions planned to respond to the setbacks, saying she didn't want to speculate.

what's astounding to me is that the prosecuting attorneys didn't see this coming... even more astounding is that the justice department didn't catch it when the legislation was being drafted, and even more astounding yet is that it wasn't caught in congress... what is says to me is that, under intense pressure from the likes of cheney, addington, and rove, with the clock ticking down to the november elections, everybody was much more interested in kissing bush's ass than doing due diligence... what it also says to me is that there is a fundamental opposition to this process even within the ranks of the military judges, that they would be willing to risk this kind of media bloodbath to make a key legal point...

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