Read it and weep, from today’s NYT.

Note that the statutes congress has enacted since 2005 to deal with enemy combatants – and to constrain the authority of the United States courts to interfere and construct an alternative system for judicial supervision of wartime military detentions — expressly assume that the combatants will continue to be held outside the United States (i.e., outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts) in Gitmo. If the combatants are brought here, all bets are off.

If this story is true, it is simply stunning that cabinet officers running this war would urge bringing the combatants into the territorial United States without any procedure on the books prescribing how their detention and trials would be handled — leaving it to the courts to make it up as they go along.

I’ve urged the creation by congress of a national security court with carefully drawn procedures so we no longer have to worry that the rights of alien enemy combatants in the war on terror are determined by something as arbitrary as whether they are held in Gitmo, or Afghanistan, or Pittsburgh. If the administration doesn’t want to push for something like that, fine. But how could we even think of bringing these people here without a good idea of what that would portend as a matter of law? And why? To impress whom?

Do Gates and Rice know the state of the evidence against each of these guys? Do they know whether, with respect to each one, we have sufficient evidence we can use in American civilian courts if the U.S. courts end up holding that, because the combatants are within their jurisdiction, proceedings against them must accord with the evidentiary rules that apply in our civilian courts?

How could we possibly think about bringing these guys here without knowing such things?

Given how much we have bashed AG Gonzales over the last couple of weeks, it is worth noting that the report indicates that he, in conjunction with Vice President Cheney, beat back this foolish idea. Good for them.