taliban090223

The Heritage Foundation has long argued that the Department of Defense’s detention of combatants picked up on the battlefield was consistent with both the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law. The ACLU and other activists strongly disagreed with this position ad hoped the Obama Administration would reverse this policy.

Instead, the Obama Administration has chosen to continue the DoD’s prudent detainee policies. The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration has told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.

In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot sue for their release.