Admin rushes handover to distract from Supreme Court ruling?

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I heard this "conspiracy" theory proposed on a talk radio show late... that the Bush administration was receiving early information that the Supreme Court was going to rule against them on the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, and therefore rushed the Iraq handover by two days in order to grab the main headlines and downplay the ruling story?

It makes sense, and if it's true... it seems to have worked.

― andy, Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Has it? The ruling itself isn't cancelled as a result, and what will follow from that will occur as it does.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Someone on television was convinced that they did it to distract from F911 being number one at the box office! hahahah. Pick yer conspiracy.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

we're all dead within the year anyway.

― benito mussolinington (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

But certainly yesterday and today, the "secret" handover and ensuing violence has certainly overshadowed the heavy duty fact that even Scalia (!!) found major fault with the White House's policy... he went as far to say that unless Congress overthrows the Habeus Corpus statues, the guys shouls walk.

― andy, Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I don' t know that the ruling was so damaging for the administration that they'd monkey with something as ostensibly important as the transfer of power to manage the news cycle. But stranger things have certainly been known to happen.

― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know, I feel like the coverage of the Guantanamo rulings has been pretty extensive. Also, while the rulings were certainly a loss for the administration, its not like your average news consumer gives a goddamn about Supreme Court decisions.

― Scott CE (Scott CE), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

And today the supreme court said that it was every child's god given right to look at porn on the internet. Or something like that. I wasn't really listening.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 20:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Democracy works!

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Tuesday, 29 June 2004 21:48 (twenty-one years ago)

As for some consequences of that ruling:

Senior Bush administration officials are considering moving hundreds of detainees from a facility in Cuba to prisons within the United States in response to Supreme Court rulings this week that granted military prisoners access to U.S. courts, officials said Tuesday.

As attorneys for detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began preparing the first of hundreds of expected lawsuits demanding that the government justify the detentions, senior administration officials acknowledged that they were unprepared for a rebuke in two landmark Supreme Court decisions that rejected the military's treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

Now, after being handed the losses, the administration has been left to scramble to develop a strategy for granting hearings to detainees without having to cope with an unwieldy series of lawsuits throughout the nation.

"They didn't really have a specific plan for what to do, case-by-case, if we lost," a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. "The Justice Department didn't have a plan. State didn't have a plan. This wasn't a unilateral mistake on DOD's part. It's astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 02:29 (twenty-one years ago)

The supreme court ruling's been big news here, as 2 Australians are caught up in all this and Hicks was one of the first who was meant to go to trial anyway.

I assumed they did the handover early to, as they said, avoid insurgents fuckin' shit up for them in the process. Occams razor applies here, methinks.

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 03:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Holding the handover two days early was the first great idea they've had since this mess began - mainly as Trayce says, to preempt anything the insurgents had planned for today.

― Chris Dahlen (Chris Dahlen), Wednesday, 30 June 2004 14:31 (twenty-one years ago)

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