that by treating the detainees as guilty, they might as well *be* guilty - as in, do the things they are already accused of doing - once given the chance? (This thought occurs to American prisoners, children, and spouses all the time). Does the treatment of detainees, and the entire War on Terror as pursued by the Bush administration not carry the seeds of self-fulfillment? My 5-year-old figured that one out.

Why doesn't Salon have anyone capable of legal analysis like Dahlia Lithwick? (Or any analysis, for that matter.)

You section editors must feel great linking to better writing and analysis on other web sites, rather than being able to provide it in your own sections. If you had a decent editor, who placed emphasis on journalism and writing rather than hit counts and being more like TV, you'd rarely, if ever, have to do so.

But it's really gotta sting that Slate has better writers, more well-known writers, a wider readership, and better finances than Salon has enjoyed - at least since Walsh took over.

(Cue bitter, cackling laughter...)

Justice Scalia's reasoning hardly seems "reasoning" by any objective standard.

Yes, whether one is inclined to violence or not, once grossly wronged, many people will resort to violence.

That is the unfortunate collateral damage of horrible mistakes. But the consequences of holding these prisoners "forever" are far more dire, for they inspire hundreds if not thousands of others to violence in retribution.

I am saddened by the feeble justifications of Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts and Thomas for their votes.

It is pretty clear from past comments by the brilliant legal scholar Antonin Scalia that he spends way too much time watching "24" -- and identifying with the Kiefer Sutherland character.

I wonder, would Justice Scaley would be miffed at being incarcerated, sleep deprived, waterboarded and otherwise tortured for no good reason for the past five years?

She has this exactly right.

If you lock a guy away for years, in brutal conditions, on the scantest of evidence (or none at all, just a hunch), can it be a surprise that he develops a bit of a grudge, and perhaps a nihilistic mind-set?

I'm not sure I buy the argument that the US "created" the 9/11 hijackers (though I can track the argument in theory), but the argument that we created the circumstances that led this particular individual to turn suicide attacker is a much more credible one to make.

It's clear that Scalia's main goal now on the SCOTUS is to carry Cheney's water.

Of course they resort to violence against Americans after we've mistreated them so grossly! That is evidence of everything that is wrong with Guantanamo, and with the Bush's strategies in general.

for teaching people to think that correlation is ever an adequate substitution for causation in jurisprudence.

We're going back to the days of the witch hunts, when there didn't have to be any physically measurable evidence against the defendant.

Back then, defendants could be tortured into confession just because some government official thought there was a correlation between angry old women and cows going dry.

One of the social forces that brought that ugly chapter in Euro-American law to a close was the movement in the legal profession against the acceptance of "spectral evidence" in secular court proceedings.

In order words, all of the evidence used to incarcerate or torture someone has to be physically measurable. There has to be causation, not just correlation.

We have gone back to the days of spectral evidence.

As a prime example, zero tolerance drugged driving laws -- where you don't have to impaired in any way to be convicted of driving while impaired, just as long as your blood contains evidence that you were high some time in the near or distant past. Just because there is a ASSUMED CORRELATION between doing illegal drugs and driving impaired.

You see -- the American legal system has been abandoning the notion of causality on a wide scale. It's not just Guantanamo. Something like 15 states have drugged driving laws where you can be convicted of driving while impaired even if the blood concentration of the drug in question was far below levels determined by science to cause impairment.

And the War on Drugs taught has taught to think this way.

Now this abandonment of physical causality leaked out of drug policy into foreign policy and look where we are now -- treating terrorists like they're demons with supernatural powers that are so wide-reaching and powerful, magical thinking in the legal system is fully justified.

Thanks heavens five justices still have some grip on reality and are immune to such magical thinking.

I had to smile when I read the juvenile taunt that Scalia apparently considers "jurisprudential" to the effect that the country would regret the day the Habeas decision was issued. It would have been so much more appropriate - and the passage of time has proven it to be irrefutably true - if it had been written in the Gore v. Bush opinion.

I never heard heard peep out of any Salon columnist or writer as one state after another passed laws that automatically convict people for driving while impaired today for the joint they smoked last week.

When you can get convicted of driving while impaired TODAY for the joint you smoked LAST WEEK -- well then, of course, you're not going to expect accused terrorists to be tried on the basis of any habeas corpus or proximate cause.

But nobody thought it was politically correct to defend causality when it came to drugged driving.

It's that old saying about how they came for the potheads but I wasn't a pothead so I didn't care. Etc.

No SHIT, Scalia!

Golly! Is it sooooooooooo crazy to imagine that a person who has been held against his will, falsely accused of... err... something (since charges were NEVER brought against them), and tortured; would then (upon release) be so ANGRY at their captors that they would seek to fight against them?!?!?

Yeah... Scalia is probably right... more Americans may die when these guys get out... because WE HAVE CREATED THESE NEW TERRORISTS and "ENEMY COMBATANTS!!!"

If they weren't against us before, they sure-as-shit are NOW!!!

Scalia... there is a HOT place in HELL waiting for your ass!

DEMOCRATS, UNITE!