News Analysis: Sudden Shift on Detainee: "When the Pentagon said this week that it would let an American being held as an enemy combatant meet a lawyer, which it had refused to do for months, it appeared on the surface to be a major concession to the critics of the policy of detaining terrorism suspects.
But it may be that the action was less of a substantive change than merely a calculated gesture to help the administration shield its policies from criticism and reversal by the courts.
... The Pentagon made its statement about Mr. Hamdi's ability to confer with a lawyer a day before the Justice Department was obliged to file a brief with the Supreme Court asking it to uphold a ruling by an appeals court that President Bush was within his rights as a wartime president to detain Mr. Hamdi indefinitely without access to a lawyer.
The brief itself, however, does not retreat from the hard-line position the administration has taken all along, that the president has the authority to detain an American citizen indefinitely without consulting a lawyer.

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- posted by geoff @ #