I haven’t read the decision yet, and have no immediate plans to do so (it’s 185 pages, and I’m busy with a long feature for a different magazine). But as with the McCain Amendment, I wonder if the effect of extending Geneva protections to al Qaeda won’t be to encourage rendition of al Qaeda detainees to less scrupulous countries. That would be an unhappy result (from both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective), though without digging into the opinion I can’t say if there might be a legislative or other policy remedy to the problems the case raises.
