I am also retired military. I thought I was serving to uphold the constitution, and I want my country to accord these kinds of rights to enemy detainiees because I want the opinion of the world on the shoulders of any of our enemies to press them to provide THESE SAME RIGHTS to our serving soldiers, sailors and airmen.
I find Scalia so far off base in his worship of the overriding authority of the executive, I don't understand where he thinks he is coming from. This country is not going to fall because we extended an habeas hearing to detainees at Guantanimo.
So you want illegal combatants to have the same rights as legitimate prisoners of war? In fact, the SC decision actually gave these illegal combatants rights which exceed those granted to POWs. How many of the ten of thousands of German prisoners held in the US during WWII were granted habeas corpus?
You keep pointing out the SC reigned in the abuse of power by the Executive branch. What you fail to comprehend is that the SC trounced all over Congress as well. The Detainee Treatment Act was passed by Congress and signed by the President (because the SC said the President needed the Congress to setup the military tribunals) and expressly did not grant the detainees habeas corpus, “[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” §1005(e)(1), 119 Stat. 2742. So the SC threw out several precedents and thumbed its nose at both Congress and the Executive branch.
Without a preconceived notion of the desired outcome, I don’t know how the SC could have ignored precedents such as Quirin (two US citizens held on US soil, tried by a military tribunal and executed) and Eisentrager.