The most basic element in the foundation of our justice system has, at long last, been brought out in the open and dusted off for the first time in the going on eight years of the Bush administration. An article in the New York Times titled, Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case, reports that the Court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that assertions that events had "reportedly" occured and that the connections were "said to" exist without providing information about the source of information that was used to claim that a Guantanamo prisoner was an "enemy combatant" were not sufficient evidence to make that designation.

In essence, the court said that the lack of evidence was itself evidence that the claim was false.

There are two very significant things about the court's decision. One is the fact that the case was argued even before the Supreme court's June 12 decision that the prisoners have the right to habeas corpus in civilian courts, and the other is the fact that two of the three judges making the unanimous decision were appointed by Republican presidents, one of them being a George Bush appointment.

The court's decision that the Bush administration must use evidence for making decisions to imprison and kill people is the opposite of the distortions, equivocations, dissembling and outright lies that Bush used as his excuse to attack Iraq, all excuses that didn't have the one thing needed to back them up when presented in a court of law: evidence.

If the decisions of Bush and his Republicans are to be subjected to scrutiny in a court of law with the requirement that there be evidence for what they say and intend to do, then that puts an end to the Republican ideology that what they wish were true is sufficient for what they want to do, and, well they oh so very much want to do that, regardless of the fact that they have no evidence. The court has said no to that.

Typical of the never say die attitude of the Bush administration, is Glenn M. Sulmasy, a law professor at the Coast Guard Academy, in his quote, "This case displays the inadequacies of having civilian courts inject themselves into military decision making."

This statement ignores the fact that the June 12 Supreme Court said exactly the opposite, that the prisoners have a right to have their petition heard before a civilian court. And, it ignores the fact that the military doesn't have courts of justice, only military courts to resolve issues arising from the proper functioning and procedures of the military.

It also ignores the fact that the military has no jurisdiction over civilians. The military is a part of the executive branch. It is not a part of the judicial branch and cannot render judicial decisions. The last thing the statement ignores is the fact that the referred to "military decision making" is obviously restricted to military matters, not judicial matters.

There are other articles about this case that refer to "questionable evidence" and the title of the NYT article, Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case, still misses the point about evidence. This shows a lack of understanding of the nature of evidence.

Evidence is not questionable, precisely because it is evidence, and evidence cannot be faulted, if it is evidence. When it is questionable and can be faulted, it was never evidence to begin with. The best example of this is the fact that there was never any evidence that there were WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, because they didn't exist. What doesn't exist has never and can never produce any evidence.

This is the elementary fact that was ignored by George Bush, whose ignorance has led us to the need to have the nature of evidence explained to him by a court of law.