Notwithstanding the long hours spent in the Scooter Libby trial this week, Judge Reggie Walton had time yesterday to make a ruling in the 16 cases involving Guantanamo detainees.

Shorter version: he put the cases in the freezer until the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rules on whether there's been an ouster of habeas jurisdiction.

In a Daily Kos diary defense attorney David Seth has more on how the decision in practical terms means that there won't be an inquiry into the justification for detaining Gitmo prisoners, some for more than 5 years in our civilian courts.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Team Libby told the jury in opening argument that the White House initially threw Scooter Libby "under the bus" in an attempt to shield Karl Rove. They did this by having then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan initially clear Rove but not Libby.

Then, according to Libby, Vice President Cheney intervened on Scooter's behalf and directed McClellan to also clear Libby. According to White House Press Conference tapes, McClellan did so. The jury has now heard portions of those tapes.

How does Bush enter into this? Jason Leopold and Mark Ash write at Truthout that Ted Wells' purpose in bringing a handwritten note of Cheney's before the jury while David Addington was on the stand was not only to show Libby was upset about Rove being cleared but not him, but also to show how the Veep scratched out "this pres" from his note to McClellan. Read Team Libby's way, the note in original form would read:

"not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The words "this Pres." were crossed out and replaced with "that was," but are still clearly legible in the document.

It stuns me that some Dems and Dem analyzsts seem never to learn the most basic lessons of politics. Four years after proving clearly that political cravenness was the surest way to humiliating defeat, some are, incredibly, urging "caution" again on Iraq. Matt Yglesias writes:

I tend to agree with Ed Kilgore that it would be a mistake to jab the knives in the back of [the Warner] resolution. At the moment, absolutely anything that congress says or does about Iraq is pure kabuki. In kabuki terms, this resolution counts as a repudiation of Bush by Democrats and many Republicans. As policy, from what I can tell this resolution is not-so-wonderful. As kabuki, though, it's good kabuki.

No Matt, it is horrible kabuki. We do not need phony Republican repudiation of Bush, Matt. We do not need a phony nonbinding resolution that embraces the Bush narrative on the Iraq Debacle.

Senator Feingold, apparently one of the few Democrats whose brain (folks love to talk about Feingold's spine when what is most admirable in Feingold is his brain, both for policy AND politics; Feingold was on top of the Iraq issue when the celebrated Rahmbo was still cowering in the corner on the issue) seems to be functioning in Washington, explains it in a manner easy to understand:

A trial that was billed "as a major component in [the government's] war on terrorism" has, predictably enough, ended with an acquittal on the most serious charge.

[Muhammad] Salah, 53, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48, a one-time assistant business professor at Howard University in Washington, had been accused of laundering money for Hamas terrorists fighting to topple the Israeli government.

A jury found both men not guilty of racketeering. Both were convicted of the significantly less serious crime of obstructing justice, and Ashqar was convicted of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

"This is a great day for justice," said defense attorney Michael E. Deutsch, who represented former grocer Muhammad Salah.

This is why:

I know my wife hasn't seen the following headline yet, or there'd be one hell of an angry, angst-ridden email in my inbox: Oklahoma National Guard to Deploy to Iraq in 2008

It seems that my brigade has been given a warning order to prepare to deploy to Iraq in 2008, about six months after I get home. I don't know if it's the full brigade, or just the parts that haven't deployed recently, but with the new change in army policy, I could conceivably go home this summer and turn around next January and go to Iraq.

Lovely. Just f**cking lovely.

. . . And if I thought that my current deployment would make me less likely to go on this new one, boy did I have another thing coming:

About 85 percent of the soldiers in the 45th Infantry Brigade already have served combat deployments, most in Iraq or Afghanistan. Two of the brigade's units are deployed now. The 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry is in Afghanistan, and the 245th Engineer Company is in Iraq. Wyatt said these soldiers will have the experience that comes with being combat veterans, but he said it will also cause additional stress. "We understand we're asking the families and employers and soldiers to deploy again," Wyatt said.

Erm, Ya think, Sir?!?

I don't know if I'm going to have to go or not. I damn sure ain't volunteering.

Wyatt said he has pushed the Army to put the brigade on alert and issue mobilization orders as soon as possible to allow commanders access to additional equipment and other resources the troops will need. He said he hopes official orders will come in by the end of February. Body armor and some weapons are in short supply to Oklahoma Guardsmen, as National Guard units nationally have shared their resources to equip troops deploying to combat areas.

Matt Yglesias writes a post that makes no sense to me on Iraq and the Dems:

[L]iberals should "keep our powder dry" in terms of Iraq stuff until the supplemental appropriation request comes down in a couple of months. . . . I meant liberals should keep our intra-party bickering powder dry. There simply isn't an important practical difference between the different degrees of anti-warness that various politicians have staked out at this point. There will be important practical differences in terms of how people vote on proposed amendments to the supplemental request. That's the time to start really worrying about what people are up to.

Will be? No Matt, there ARE important practical differences TODAY. Some, like Russ Feingold, understand that cutting off funding is the only way to end the Iraq Debacle. And while I applauded Barack Obama's political instincts demonstrated in his Iraq proposal, I also know, as Kevin Drum rightly points out:

[E]veryone talking about this already knows the basic answer: Congress can declare war, it has certain military rulemaking powers, and it can fund and defund a war. But that's it. Like it or not, Congress simply doesn't have the power to manage specific operational aspects of a war. Big Tent Democrat made the case for this a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's pretty convincing. Now, this is not a problem. Anyone who seriously wants us to withdraw from Iraq merely needs to introduce legislation defunding the war. . . . But Obama's description of his legislation very carefully avoids any mention of funding other than to explicitly say that it "does not affect the funding for our troops in Iraq." . . . Without that, he must know that his legislation is almost certainly futile.

But Matt, who says the funding issue is what matters, says he disagrees with Drum and agrees with this:

I think Kevin Drum gets this one wrong. He says that cutting off funding is the only way for Congress to control military action, and that Obama's claim that his plan won't reduce funding for the troops in Iraq means that it won't work. But if I read Obama's statement correctly, he means that it won't reduce funding for troops currently in Iraq; it will forbid adding new ones, and it will mandate a systematic withdrawal by a date certain. Clearly the Congress has the power to limit not only funding but troop levels, and it has the power to order the Pentagon to plan and execute a withdrawal.

Matt, either funding is the critical issue or it is not. Kleiman says it is not. Kleiman is also dead wrong on the Congress' power to manage the conduct of the war.

But more importantly, if we want Democrats to vote the right way on funding the Iraq war (to me the right way is to not vote more funds without an established cutoff date, in short the Feingold Plan), we must pressure them NOW, not when the vote comes up. Matt's idea appears to be that of a disinterested commentator who will critique the actions taken and who has disdain for efforts to EFFECT that vote. This makes absolutely no sense to me. But heck, maybe I have the wrong attitude about this.

I want the Iraq Debacle to end.

In the Judiciary Committee hearing on "Exercising Congress' Constitutional Power To End A War," chaired by Senator Russ Feingold, one of the more bizarre aspects of the testimony presented was that it actually had little discussion of Congress' power to end a war and focused instead on Congress' power to regulate the President's management of war. The other bizarre aspect of the testimony was the utter disregard for the existing Iraq Authorization To Use Military Force. It is necessary to remind just how awful this resolution was:

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq . . .

Indeed, Democratic politicians and legal scholars have been utterly disingenuous in their discussions on the subject. I'll explain why on the flip.

See also Rep. Brad Miller discusses the issue with Secretary Albright.

I'm heading back to Denver today after three days at the Scooter Libby trial. As always, a huge thanks to TChris and Big Tent for posting in my absence and on other topics.

I'll be popping in and out here as I have internet access, but here's a place for you to talk about what's on your mind.

Noted jurist John Henry Wigmore described cross-examination as the "greatest legal invention ever invented for the discovery of truth." (5 J. Wigmore, Evidence §1367 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1974.) Put another way, it's a great tool for ferreting out untruths in the courtroom.

It's Fitzgerald's job in the Libby case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Scooter Libby lied to federal agents and the grand jury and obstructed justice.

It's the defense's job to test that proof.

Patrick Fitzgerald has placed a lot of faith in Judy Miller and Matthew Cooper and their less than perfect memories and note-taking skills. The defense chipped away at both today. There were no Perry Mason moments, but neither came across as 100% sure of what Libby told them.

An audit tells us what's been happening during the "see no evil" years of Republican congressional rule:

"Our troops are going without even as government funds go to pay for such boondoggles as an Olympic-size swimming pool in an unused training camp," said a statement issued by the Senate Democratic Communications Center directed by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ...

The quarterly audit released Wednesday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, found the $300 billion U.S. war and reconstruction effort continues to be plagued with waste, spiraling violence and corruption.

Now that Congress is in an oversight mode, it will be fun to watch as tough questions are asked and avoided.

Hoping, perhaps, to avoid a subpoena, Attorney General Gonzales announced the administration's decision to control the flow of information submit documents to Congress that will (Gonzales asserts) demonstrate the administration's newfound respect for FISA.

The documents, which include applications for electronic wiretaps and orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, will be made available to congressional committees only and not released to the public.

Now brace yourself for a laugh:

Gonzales said the Justice Department would cooperate with both chambers of Congress. "It's important for us that they understand what we're doing," the attorney general said. "All they have to do is ask."

Some of us would like to know what the administration has been doing for the last six years. It's time for Congress to ask.

Via Scribe in the diaries:

Today, a prosecutor in Munich disclosed the existence of arrest warrants for 13 members of Ghost Air crews, relative to the kidnapping of Khaled al Masri from Macedonia to a US prison in Afghanistan. He was left to molder there for months while Condi and others debated exactly what to do with him, seeing as he really was the wrong guy. Ultimately, they had him flown back to and dumped off pretty close to the same spot he'd been kidnapped from. The US District Court has dismissed his tort suit, on the "state secrets" doctrine; he's appealing to the Fourth Circuit.

TalkLeft background on al Masri is here.