..in the FAQ. It's not pitched at an elementary enough level for me, but may help you.

But it didn't work in the QUOTE, dammit!

if we didn't have a rubberstamp Congress. But we do. Oh, boy, do we ever.

We don't have an army. We have a SHELL of an army. And the generals know that. They also know that a navy and air force only go so far - when push comes to shove, you need boots on the ground.

And we don't have those. They're all in Iraq.

That was actually much more egregious at Abu Ghraib, and obviously elsewhere in Iraq (at least some of those prisoners were eventurally released) in other places in the world, that there is a substantial number of these prisoners that might be fairly easily shown to be pretty much innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Just throwing it out there.

I also have a problem with the "stateless" arguments being used to undermine the GCs, which also, I thought, even applied to "stateless" parties.  Also, though, if these people are nationals, they are not stateless, it seems to me, unless they renounce their citizenship or it is stripped.

if George Bush says you are. Case closed!

From what can be gleaned so far from documents released by the government under pressure of the various lawsuits, it would be a frickin' miracle if a single member of AQ or the Taliban happened to actually be detained in Gitmo. Looks mostly like just a bunch of unlucky bystanders, to me.

to weigh heavily against the government interpertation

A negative inference may be drawn from Congress' failure to include §1005(e)(1) within the scope of §1005(h)(2). Cf., e.g., Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U. S. 320, 330. "If ... Congress was reasonably concerned to ensure that [§§1005(e)(2) and (3)] be applied to pending cases, it should have been just as concerned about [§1005(e)(1)], unless it had the different intent that the latter [section] not be applied to the general run of pending cases." Id., at 329. If anything, the evidence of deliberate omission is stronger here than it was in Lindh. The legislative history shows that Congress not only considered the respective temporal reaches of §§1005(e)(1), (2), and (3) together at every stage, but omitted paragraph (1) from its directive only after having rejected earlier proposed versions of the statute that would have included what is now paragraph (1) within that directive's scope. Congress' rejection of the very language that would have achieved the result the Government urges weighs heavily against the Government's interpretation. See Doe v. Chao, 540 U. S. 614, 621-623. Pp. 7-20.

SCOTUS also considered the legislative history of Congress in evaluating the AUMF and DTA. What that amounts to is equating the legislative history of Congress to legal precedent.

See 317 U. S., at 28-29. Neither the AUMF nor the DTA can be read to provide specific, overriding authorization for the commission convened to try Hamdan. Assuming the AUMF activated the President's war powers, see Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, and that those powers include authority to convene military commissions in appropriate circumstances, see, e.g., id., at 518, there is nothing in the AUMF's text or legislative history even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization set forth in UCMJ Art. 21. Cf. Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85, 105.

Congress is bound only by the Constitution and not precedent in the same way the SCOTUS is bound only by the Constitution and not precedent. The reason given in other decisions is that people making decisions about their future have some right to expect stability in their government.

Think of it in terms of a stock. If it was up one day and down the next and its chart went all over the place it would be an uncertain and risky investment.