Justice Thomas is the Man

If there is ever one great thing on the domestic front that the first President Bush ever did, it was to nominate Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Exhibit No. 930423842 comes from his dissent in today's SCOTUS ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. (Justice Thomas' dissent starts on pg. 127 of the PDF document).

An excerpt via Webloggin:

Moreover, the President’s determination that the present conflict dates at least to 1996 is supported by overwhelming evidence. According to the State Department, al Qaeda declared war on the United States as early as August 1996. See Dept. of State Fact Sheet: Usama bin Ladin (Aug. 21, 1998); Dept. of State Fact Sheet: The Charges against International Terrorist Usama Bin Laden (Dec. 20, 2000); cf. Prize Cases, 2 Black, at 668 (recognizing that a state of war exists even if “the declaration of it be unilateral” (emphasis in original)).

In February 1998, al Qaeda leadership issued another statement ordering the indiscriminate—and, even under the laws of war as applied to legitimate nation-states, plainly illegal—killing of American civilians and military personnel alike. See Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders: World Islamic Front Statement 2 (Feb. 23, 1998), in Y. Alexander & M. Swetnam, Usama bin Laden’s al-Qaida: Profile of a Terrorist Network, App. 1B (2001) (“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it”). This was not mere rhetoric; even before September 11, 2001, al Qaeda was involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the bombing of the U. S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the U. S. S. Cole in Yemen in 2000. See id., at 1. In response to these incidents, the United States “attack[ed] facilities belonging to Usama bin Ladin’s network” as early as 1998. Dept. of State Fact Sheet: Usama bin Ladin (Aug. 21, 1998).

Based on the foregoing, the President’s judgment—that the present conflict substantially predates the AUMF, extending at least as far back as al Qaeda’s 1996 declaration of war on our Nation, and that the theater of war extends at least as far as the localities of al Qaeda’s principal bases of operations—is beyond judicial reproach. And the plurality’s unsupportable contrary determination merely confirms that “‘the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility’” for making military or foreign affairs judgments. Hamdi, 542 U. S., at 585 (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (quoting Chicago & Southern Air Lines, 333 U. S., at 111).