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of enemy combatants outside of traditional legal procedure. When the Solicitor General in Padilla was asked by the judge to elaborate on whether he considered American soil to be a combat zone, he agreed, "I can say that, and I can say it boldly".

The matter of time limits is an important one. David Hicks spent over five years in detention before being released to his country of citizenship to serve a nine-month sentence. Another detainee, Mamdouh Habib, spent three years at Guantanamo Bay but was then released with no charges filed against him. Indefinite detention is a very real possibility as the War on Terror could extend for many years. Yet under the laws of war, detention can last no longer than active hostilities.

Views from within the administration do not inspire confidence in restraint. Attorney General Gonzales recently testified that the Constitution does not assure every individual or citizen in the US the right to habeas corpus. Furthermore, in Hamdan, the government requested the court decline to hear the petitioner's challenge, lending substance to critics' claims that the administration is seeking to exempt itself from judicial review.

Just as thousands of Japanese-Americans were detained during World War II, a new era of McCarthyism aimed at Muslim fundamentalists could see innocent people denied their Constitutional rights. The attempt to deny the right to habeas corpus is made more disturbing by the emergence of photographic evidence of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

TORTURE

Former detainee Mamdouh Habib has claimed abusive interrogation techniques are used at Guantanamo Bay. Other secret prisons, allegedly used to torture suspects, continue to be run by the Central Intelligence Agency without proper oversight.

Leaked memos from within the Bush administration have revealed a nonchalant attitude towards torture, with government lawyers attempting to circumvent international treaties rather than upholding the individual as the central unit of ethical value. According to one Justice Department memo, "Congress can no more interfere with the president's conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield". But as Healy and Lynch (2006) point out, the Constitution gives Congress powers that bear directly upon treatment of prisoners.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which permits the use of all "necessary and appropriate force" against those who "planned, authorized,

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