This Washington Post editorial is mostly critical of the Bush Administration’s handling of the Josa Padilla case, but it includes an important concession:

In one important respect, we think Judge Floyd was too tough. He ruled that the government had no right to detain as an enemy combatant a U.S. citizen who had been arrested domestically in a civilian setting. But when Congress authorized the use of military force after Sept. 11, 2001, it gave the president the power “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” responsible for the attacks and “in order to prevent any future” attacks. If the war on terror is in any meaningful sense a real war, detaining people believed to be plotting attacks on the enemy’s behalf must be part of the power to fight it. There may be times when enemy soldiers, even if U.S. citizens, must be held but cannot be tried in civilian courts.

Yep.

Related:
Approved: Britain’s prevention of Terrorism Act
What to do with Jose Padilla

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