Lay down your king, BushCo®. Your Eisentrager Gambit is a losing strategy.

The Supreme W. Court has finally decided that enemy combatants held in Guantanamo Bay,Cuba, have the right to ask for a writ of habeas corpus in American courts and petition said court for their release. (after two years of ignoring documented cases of torture and death).

In Rasul Et Al v Bush, SCOTUS ruled against BushCo^®:

The Court rejects respondents’ (BushCo^®'s) primary submission that these cases are controlled by Eisentrager’s holding that a District Court lacked authority to grant habeas relief to German citizens captured by U.S.forces in China, tried and convicted of war crimes by an American military commission headquartered in Nanking, and incarcerated in occupied Germany.

The Eisentrager Court found six critical facts: The German prisoners were

(a)enemy aliens who
(b)had never been or resided in the United States,
(c)were captured outside U.S. territory and there held in military custody,
(d)were there tried and convicted by the military*
(e)for offenses committed there,and
(f)were imprisoned there at all times.

Petitioners here differ from the Eisentrager detainees in important respects:

They are not nationals of countries at war with the United States,
and they deny that they have engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country;
they have never been afforded access to any tribunal*, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing;
and for more than two years they have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control.

The Eisentrager Court also made clear that all six of the noted critical facts were relevant only to the question of the prisoners’constitutional entitlement to habeas review. LINK

Of course, Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote.

STEVENS,J., delivered the opinion of the Court,in which O’CONNOR, SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER,JJ., joined.KENNEDY,J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. SCALIA,J.,filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST,C.J.,and THOMAS,J., joined.

* Could Military Tribunals be BushCo^®'s way out? Maybe the game isn't over yet.