Where Do We Go After Boumediene?

A Nice back and forth over at TNR between two legal scholars on what we need to do with Gitmo detainees and the future of this whole problem after Boumediene and Parhart. What I think gets lost in the shuffle is that there was no long term planning by the Bush Administration about what to do with these guys and how we were going to process them over the long run. The administration essentially thought they could cage detainees in Cuba - argue that Gitmo, although on a US Military Base, isn't under US jurisdiction - and hope the Supreme Court didn't notice. That ... and some bad lawyering from John Yoo - was their long term strategy. We need a comprehensive solution from Congress (note: good discussion on why DTA wasn't good enough in SCOTUS eyes).

Good part:

"Look, I believe the policies the administration adopted post-9/11 were better for national security than the ones we had pre-9/11. But that said, I do think that, and I've said this going back to 2003 or 2004, that at a certain point, when using the military system of detentions is obviously not working, and thoughtful people who want to support the policy realize that it's not a good fit, I think their energy would have been much better directed at trying to come up with a system that would be comprehensive and permanent and legitimate, rather than letting it get caught up in the politics of executive power. "