Gawd, the spin is so fast it gives you motion sickness. Most people I talk to look at this and shake their heads at how obviously stupid and leftist this decision is on it's face.
In flyover country we speak the same plain English the Geneva conventions are written in and don't need overeducated ivy league black robes to tell us up is down.
The spin is not the most disturbing part. That ruling, located at: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/05-184.pdf , has at least one huge glaring error.
For non-signatories to be be covered by the Geneva Convention Articles, they have to adopt and abide by it.
I'm not legal eagle, but I would think that torturing and beheading captured American soldiers, isn't exactly abiliding by the Geneva Convertion Articles. Additionally, I'm mistified as to how they could write such an opinion: 1) with Article 2 quoted (hoping no one would notice, just completely and totally arrogant, or STUPID)
2) Knowing what the extremists do to our captured troops
Here's a snip of section 4(d)ii:
Common Article 3, which appears in all four Conventions, pro-vides that, in a “conflict not of an international character occurring inthe territory of one of the High Contracting Parties [i.e., signatories],each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum,”certain provisions protecting “[p]ersons . . . placed hors de combat by. . . detention,” including a prohibition on “the passing of sentences . . . without previous judgment . . . by a regularly constituted court af-fording all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable bycivilized peoples. The D. C. Circuit ruled Common Article 3 inappli-cable to Hamdan because the conflict with al Qaeda is international in scope and thus not a “conflict not of an international character. ”That reasoning is erroneous. That the quoted phrase bears its literalmeaning and is used here in contradistinction to a conflict betweennations is demonstrated by Common Article 2, which limits its ownapplication to any armed conflict between signatories and providesthat signatories must abide by all terms of the Conventions even if another party to the conflict is a nonsignatory, so long as the nonsig-natory “accepts and applies” those terms.