THIS STUFF ALL SEEMED SO EASY WHEN HE WAS A JUNIOR SENATOR...:

Obama Faces Court Test Over Detainee (WILLIAM GLABERSON, 7/29/09, NY Times)

The fate of one of the youngest detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison is emerging as a major test of whether the courts or the president has the final authority over when prisoners there are released. [...]

In the showdown over Mr. Jawad, Judge Huvelle, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, seems poised to assert the courts’ authority to release detainees who are not legally held, while the Obama administration has suggested it can continue detention when it claims it must.

For some former Bush administration officials, the fight over Mr. Jawad’s fate is a bittersweet moment in which the new administration is wrestling with some of the arguments that were advanced for years by Bush officials about the risks of opening the courts to the detainees.

The Obama administration must decide before Thursday’s court session whether to make Mr. Jawad’s habeas suit a test case, said Charles D. Stimson, who was a Defense Department official until 2007 and is now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“This is the Obama administration’s time to decide,” Mr. Stimson said, “what they will do when a habeas judge orders a person released, but they can’t in good conscience let him go.”