Hot on the heels of the Supreme Court’s Guantanamo “habeas rights for enemy combatants” decision in Boumediene v. Bush last Thursday, the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan accomplished a similar - albeit messier, but less verbose - result the next day.

A large number of militants staged a brazen bomb-and-rocket attack on the Sarposa Prison in southern Afghanistan late Friday.  While a truck bomb blew down the front gate, a suicide bomber detonated himself (on his way to his “encounter” with 41 virgins), blowing a large hole in a back wall and allowing more than 600 inmates to escape.  

Early rumors that the ACLU has already dispatched a team to Afghanistan to identify potential clients for civil rights claims against the United States under the “functional test” for the extraterritorial reach of constitutional protections under Boumediene remain - thus far - unsubstantiated.

Included among those liberated from Sarposa, with the help of some 30 insurgents on motorbikes, were an estimated 400 convicted and imprisoned Taliban terrorists.  It is reported that at least 17 police officers and prisoners were killed.

Although we do not yet know where or how many additional folks will be killed by those who have now escaped from Sarposa or by those who will now be released from Guantanamo, courtesy of five justices of the United States Supreme Court, rest assured, the toll will be more than zero.  And the fatalities will take place somewhere, maybe even in a skyscraper, mall or subway near you.

BH Obama praises the decision in Boumediene.  John McCain calls it one of the worst decisions to have come out of the Supreme Court in its history.  How do you think members of the Taliban look at it?

   Listen up, class.  That cheering you hear (no, no, not the ACLU party at DNC headquarters in Washington) is from al-Qaeda, bin Laden and Ahmadinejad.

In a sharply divided 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday moved the nation one giant step closer to its fate.

Burrowing through the labyrinthine recesses of its liberal wing, five of the justices (Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens and Breyer) discard the reasoned analyses of the dissenters (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito) and, in the rapier accurate dissent of Justice Scalia, author a decision that “… warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable ‘functional’ test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well.)”

Layman’s English translation: the majority opinion is an unprincipled and dangerous mistake.  Ominously, Justice Scalia adds: “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.”

Let us hope, class, that the Nation actually survives long enough to stop the judicial masochism now masquerading as reason and emanating from the Supreme Court. 

Not surprisingly, Democrat presidential candidate BH Obama praised the ruling as “an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.”

Jonh McCain reacted a bit differently: “I think it’s one of the worst decisions in history.  It opens up a whole new chapter and interpretation of our Constitution.”

Once, when principle and reason guided the Court, it was recognized (in a case called Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez) that although the Constitution protects against governmental invasion of individual rights, “… it is not a suicide pact.”  Not surprisingly, yesterday’s majority opinion does not mention the case.

Five people in black robes have now placed the Nation on a course that will ultimately result - depending on who the next President is - in the overruling of that principle.  The decision in Boumediene v. Bush marks the potential beginning of the line of future cases - again, assuming an Obama administration is presented with the opportunity to appoint one or more new justices - where the notion that the Constitution is not a suicide pact will first be questioned as “outdated,” then criticized as “mean-spirited dictum” and finally rejected as “fundamentally wrong.”  

The ACLU and its apologists - aka, the Democrats who want you to place even more power into their hands - demand that the Constitution be scoured for some heretofore undiscovered cache of “rights” within a “penumbra” of concepts concocted by justices of whom it approves to be exactly that: a suicide pact. 

So, class, think carefully about whom will you be voting for in November, because whether the Constitution is eventually held to mandate national hara-kiri may in some measure depend on your vote.  

We have always been struck by the Left’s willful ignoring of facts linking Saddam Hussein to terrorist groups.

In an April 21 column, U.S. Senator Jon Kyl notes “Critics of the war in Iraq often try to minimize – if not dismiss – the links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists in Iraq.  Yet, Saddam’s ties to terrorists are well known and were confirmed yet again in a new report commissioned by the Joint Forces Command.  It found that Saddam Hussein actively supported and financed terrorist activities during the years he controlled Iraq.”

Kyl says the report, “Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” which was released on March 13 and was based on a review of over 600,000 documents captured in Iraq since 2003, concludes,  “Saddam’s security forces and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short-term).”

Further, Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard eloquently describes the media’s blindness and deafness regarding these known facts. And, there is no end in sight, of course.  It will be left to web logs, men of patriotic stature like Sen. Jon Kyl, and, yes, history to trumpet the ultimate and final truth about Iraq.

   This week’s testimony of Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, spelled out in clear, concise terms a far different perspective of progress in Iraq than many Americans have  learned from their liberal, leftist media.

Some of his points are worth underscoring:

– In the last several months, Iraq’s parliament has formulated, debated vigorously, and in many cases passed legislation dealing with vital issues of reconciliation and nation building.

– A pension law extended benefits to individuals who had been denied them because of service with the previous regime.

– The accountability and justice law, de-Baathification reform, passed after lengthy and often contentious debate, and reflects a strengthened spirit of reconciliation, as does a far-reaching amnesty law.

– The provincial powers law is a major step forward in defining the relationship between the federal and provincial governments. This involved a debate about the fundamental nature of the state similar in its complexity to our own lengthy and difficult debate over states’
rights.

– The provincial powers law also called for provincial elections by October 1, 2008. And an electoral law is now under discussion that will set the parameter for those elections.

– All major parties have announced their support for elections, which will be a major step forward in Iraq’s political development and will set the stage for national elections in late 2009.

– A vote by the Council of Representatives in January to change the design of the Iraqi flag means the flag now flies in all parts of the country for the first time in years.

– And the passage of the 2008 budget, with record amounts for capital expenditures, ensures that the federal and provincial governments will have the resources for public spending.

– All of this has been done since September.

– Last month Iraq hosted a meeting of the Arab Parliamentary Union, bringing the leaders of Arab parliaments and consultative counsels to Iraq for the first major inter-Arab meeting since 1990.

– Iraqis have built on these gains over the past months, as is most evident in the revival of marketplaces across Iraq and the reopening of long-shuttered businesses.

– According to a Center for International Private Enterprise poll last month, 78 percent of Iraqi business owners surveyed expect the Iraqi economy to grow significantly in the next two years.

– With improving security and rising government expenditures, the IMF projects that Iraq’s GDP will grow 7 percent in real terms this year, and inflation has been tamed. The dinar remains strong, and the central bank has begun to bring down interest rates.

– Iraq’s 2008 budget has allocated $13 billion for reconstruction, and a $5 billion supplemental budget this summer will further invest export revenues in building the infrastructure and providing the services that Iraq so badly needs.

– This spending also benefits the United States. Iraq recently announced its decision to purchase 40 commercial aircraft from the U.S.
at an estimated cost of $5 billion.

– Iraq has the potential to develop into a stable, secure, multiethnic, multi-sectarian democracy under the rule of law. Whether it realizes that potential is ultimately up to the Iraqi people. Our support, however, will continue to be critical.

   Here’s to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces who heard the voice of patriotism calling. They put on the uniform, shouldered a rifle, and went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving their families behind. But what was not left behind was a nation’s admiration for what they have done and what they are doing. Their sacrifices are manifest and meaningful. And while we, on our daily chores, sometimes carelessly take for granted the enormity of their deeds, reflection upon the fifth anniversary of this conflict focuses the debt we owe, and the honor that is due. We turn our eyes to the flag and understand the full measure of the gift they have given us.