Luttig, who is on the short list of Republican SCOTUS hopefulls, writes an opinion denying the Administration's request to vacate his court's decision that the Administration can seize US Citizens on US soil and hold them indefinately without trial. He wants the SCOTUS to review this decision and resolve the matter of enemy combatants because he feels that the government's decision to drop the matter hurts their credibility if they attempt to do this again in the future. I'd take the opposite tact. I think SCOTUS won't uphold this 4th circuit opinion, and that the government will forever loose the ability to make the argument they are making if this case is actually heard by SCOTUS. I think they wanted this vacated so they could leave open the possibility of doing this in the future. I don't understand how you could possibly see this differently...

Because we believe that the transfer of Padilla and the withdrawal of our opinion at the government’s request while the Supreme Court is reviewing this court’s decision of September 9 would compound what is, in the absence of explanation, at least an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court...

...For, as the government surely must understand, although the various facts it has asserted are not necessarily inconsistent or without basis, its actions have left not only the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake...

These impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today.