Not really, but I wish.

This “man” has been found to have overstepped his powers as President of the world’s largest and mightiest superpower by the Supreme Court that his father bought for him. He must feel so cheated.

Long may he regret Guantanamo Bay. He did everything he could to avoid treating these people as human beings.

He would not support the International Criminal Court. In fact, he nullified Bill Clinton’s signature on the agreement when he succeeded him in 2001, so that when it was established in 2002, the US was not involved.

It’s a pretty sinister Tribunal I guess. It’s main purpose it to prosecute for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. George Jnr just wanted to keep his options open.

And then there is the Geneva Conventions of war. US soldiers are told that when captured in a time of war that under the Geneva Conventions they are required only to give name, rank and serial number when questioned. Under these Conventions, torture is forbidden.

Bush may not have known any of this to begin with, given all his talk about war early on, but then he changed his rhetoric to take more metaphorical lines, saying that “we have declared war on terror”. Terror is a word and an emotion. If I were an Afgani or Iraqi, I’d feel “terror” when a bunch of redneck marines invade my home on a thin pretext of regime change, raping women, shooting each other and killing children in the line of duty. I’m sure their Nationalism-fuddled brains mean to do good, but they don’t know what “good” is.

This change in definition left Bush open to treat prisoners of this… um… fighting, invasion, policing exercise, annexation, call it what you will, he seemed to think it meant that the rules of war were no longer relevant, just because he changed the words he used to describe it. Well look at this:

What is little known is that the Geneva Convention actually anticipated this kind of uncertainty or ambiguity about status of prisoners. So the authors put it right there in Article 5: “Should any doubt arise as to whether persons … belong to any of the categories in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.” from Eye on the Empire by Alan Bock.

George, the Supreme Court are only telling you what you knew all along.

Now, Guantanamo Bay detainees will get their day on a real court, unless the Judiciary fold under Legislative pressures. Given the protracted detention period without charges laid, you’d have to suspect that there isn’t much to go on, and any decent Judge will see that pretty quickly.

It would be a safe bet that all but a few of the so-called “unlawful enemy combatants” will be home by the end of the year.

And as my dream for world peace and happiness continues, Bush Jr does a Harold Holt, ie. kidnapped by a Korean Submarine whilst swimming, Dick Cheney’s mate shoots him back, Rumsfeld is drafted due to low army induction rates and Condie gets pregnant and slinks away in shame to be a single mother in Jersey.