A Setback With a Silver Lining

This review of the Supreme Court's Hamdan verdict is from the Wall Street Jounal:

Indeed, none of the justices questioned the government's right to detain Salim Ahmed Hamdan (once Osama bin Laden's driver), or other Guantanamo prisoners, while hostilities continue. Nor did any of them suggest that Mr. Hamdan, or any other Guantanamo detainee, must be treated as civilians and accorded a speedy trial in the civilian courts. Precisely because opponents of the Bush administration's detention policies have advanced these, or substantially similar claims, Hamdan has dealt them a decisive defeat. Together with the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld--directly affirming the government's right to capture and detain, without criminal charge or trial, al Qaeda and allied operatives until hostilities are concluded--Hamdan vindicates the basic legal architecture relied upon by the administration in prosecuting this war.

There's an old saying, you take one step forward and two steps back. I sort of expected this after Zarqawi's death. The war goes on and we are winning!