Political Punch
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper is ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent based in the network's Washington bureau. He writes about politics and popular culture and covers a range of national stories.
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Say What?
June 29, 2006 4:04 PM
So here's the other round of questions I asked Mr. Snow after he asserted that the ruling did NOT hurt the President's ability to wage the war on terrorism.
JT: You don't think that this decision weakens the president's ability to wage a war on terror? I thought that was the whole point you guys went to the Supreme Court, because you needed this in order to...
(CROSSTALK)
SNOW: We thought it was an appropriate way to bring to justice people who are not enemy combatants in the traditional sense. The conventions of war typically have defined enemy combatants as people wearing uniforms of a sovereign country clearly marked not committing acts of violence against innocents and so on -- I mean, you know the Geneva Convention language. And it was the interpretation of the administration the military commissions were historically and legally an appropriate way to proceed. What the Supreme Court has not said is, "You can't try them." It hasn't said, "You can't bring them to justice." I think now it's a question of how properly to do that so it doesn't tie his hands.
What it does is -- it doesn't serve as a rebuke. What it says is that the Supreme Court disagrees with the method that has been designed right now by the administration and it says, "We want you to go back and consult with Congress." And that is -- as I mentioned before, a lot of this seems to have to do with procedure, and so everybody's going to go back. And the lawyers -- and I really would direct you back for further detail on this to the Justice briefing -- to figure out exactly what you need to do so that you can bring these folks to justice.
JT: I assumed that the reason you were doing it the way you were doing it is because you thought that was the best way to win the war on terror. So does it by definition, this decision, weaken, in your opinion, your ability to wage the war?
SNOW: It's really not important for me to give a personal opinion here. I gave that up when I came to this job.
JT: The White House's opinion?
SNOW: So at this particular -- you don't think about it that way. You think, what is the proper way to prosecute the war on terror? To move from one way doesn't mean that it's the only way. And so there would be different ways of bringing these people to justice.
-- jt
June 29, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (1)
If I correctly understand what was behind the Supreme Court's decision on this, since there were no laws covering the treatment of the "detainees" as defined by the administration, the Supreme Court looked at the Geneva Convention language to form its decision. I agree with Mr. Snow in that the Court didn't say that the combatants couldn't be tried at all, just that there was no governing law to try them in military tribunals. In all, I don't think the decision hampers efforts to fight terrorism, but it does clarify what legal remedies are left to the administration in prosecuting this country's enemies.
Posted by: chuck | Jun 30, 2006 8:21:25 AM
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