The Gist

New Ruling "Raises Enormous Questions" About Detainees

Another stinging rebuke for the Bush Administration's detention policies has come down in the first judicial review of military tribunals.

The ruling, made known Monday in a notice from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, overturned a Pentagon tribunal’s decision in the case of one of 17 Guantánamo detainees who are ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority from western China.

The imprisonment of the 17 Uighurs (pronounced WEE-goors) has drawn wide attention because of their claim that although they were in Afghanistan when the United States invaded in 2001, they were never enemies of this country and were mistakenly swept into Guantánamo.

Who knows how many other people have been falsely imprisoned in Guantanamo over the last 7 years? Of course, just because the an independent court which examined all the evidence says some of these people should go free, that doesn't mean they'll get out of their cells anytime soon.

The administration has said it will not return Uighur detainees to China because of concerns about their treatment at the hands of the Chinese government, which views them as terrorists.

You see, we'd rather let these people rot in our gulag as opposed to someone elses gulag.