re: #168 Obdicut

An assertion that something would be perfectly lawful is not the same thing as it actually being perfectly lawful.

courthousenews.com

The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., noted that all of his arguments “rely heavily on the premise that the war powers granted by the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) and other statutes are limited by the international laws of war.”
“This premise is mistaken,” Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote. “The international laws of war … have not been implemented domestically by Congress and are therefore not a source of authority for U.S. courts.” She added that the laws of war are “by nature contestable and fluid,” and that the president has the power to “exceed those bounds.”
Turning to domestic law, she said al-Bihani fit the government’s definition of legal detainees as those who “substantially support” enemy forces. Anyone subject to a military commission trial is subject to detention, Brown added, including those who are “part of forces associated with al-Qaida or the Taliban or those who purposefully and materially support such forces in hostilities against U.S. Coalition partners.”
……
The court also rejected al-Bihani’s claim that the government needed to prove the charges against him on “clear and convincing evidence,” rather than the more lenient “preponderance of evidence” standard. The government need only satisfy the lower burden in defending “a wartime detention — where national security interests are at their zenith and the rights of the alien petitioner at their nadir,” the court ruled.

In other words, we can hold him as long as we choose.