Viet Dinh is a law professor and former top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is largely credited with being the author or chief architect of the Patriot Act. Dinh has left the government's employ and is now expressing serious concerns about the Bush Admninistration's detention policies and treatment of enemy combatants. Specifically, Dinh says the detention of Jose Padilla is "flawed" and he predicts that the Supreme Court will rule against the Administration.

Dinh's turnabout is especially surprising because for the past two years he consistently has refuted charges that the anti-terror war is responsible for civil rights abuses of immigrants or anyone else.

Dinh isn't the only former Justice Department official jumping ship on the enemy combatant issue. So is Ashcroft's former Criminal Division Chief, Michael Chertoff, now a 3rd Circuit appellate judge, appointed by Bush (and confirmed without serious objection by the Democrats):

...Chertoff.... has said he believed the government should reconsider how it designates enemy combatants. We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of determining when, why and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy combatant, and what judicial review should be available," he said. Chertoff... also mentioned at a judicial conference in Philadelphia this month the need to reexamine procedures for combatants. "Inevitably, decisions of war are made with imperfect information," he said. "Perhaps the time has come to take a more universal approach."

Here is Dinh's current position on the Jose Padilla case and Bush's enemy combatant policy: