Did President Bush get what he needed at Guantanamo?

Was the conviction of the first person to be tried as a terrorist before a military panel at Guantanamo a victory for the Bush administration?

Not necessarily. And there could be more difficulties on the way for Bush.

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh makes the argument that when the panel convicted Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, of providing "material" support for terrorism but failed to convict him of conspiracy to commit terrorism, it left President Bush without the "big win" he needed in the case.

And, Hirsh notes, with the limited conviction, the military judges left open the question of whether driving a car is a war crime.

"The appeals court may decide not -- in which case even this memager verdict could be thrown out," Hirsh writes, concluding:

It's like the old proverb: when you shoot at a king, you must kill him. Otherwise you're going to end up worse off, and he's going to end up stronger than before. Now, after seeing the military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, throw out evidence obtained against Hamdan under "highly coercive" interrogation rules, there are even questions about what self-declared terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will get the judge to disallow under this new precedent. Hamdan likely wasn't waterboarded by the CIA, as Mohammed was. There is a reason why, at Nuremberg, no one tried to try Adolf Hitler's driver.

-- James Gerstenzang

Image: A sketch drawn on July 24. Credit: Janet Hamlin / Associated Press

Comments

[jld]

Shrub has been over-reaching and misstating all the evidence for his entire term. I suspect this case will be tossed on appeal. Just goes to show that if you circumvent the protections built into our Constitution, you likely will get slapped upside the head.

[Muhammad Zafrullah]

A lot of Christians commit crimes and sin thinking that Jesus died for them and so they would go free of the crimes they commit. What they do not understand is that if you truly believe in Jesus you will not have the capability of aggression (you would be turning the other cheek) let alone scheming to kill innocent civilians. I think what Mr. Bush will get in the end will be the realization that he has no faith in our Lord and Master Jesus Christ and that he is as bad a terrorist as Osama bin Laden.
The other benefit that Mr. Bush is going to get from the Guantanamo trials is that ordinary Americans have much better appreciation of the rule of law than he does.
Muhammad

[Robin Smith]

I'm just hoping that when president bozo leaves office, it won't be to late to try to repair all the damage he has done to our country.

Hey, you made a new word: memager. Yeah, I knew you meant 'meager', didn't you?

[Stephen]

This is starting to sound like guilt by association.

Hamdan is guilty not because he committed a crime but because he supported terrorism; and he is presumed to have supported terrorism because he was the chauffeur of a known terrorist. If that makes makes Hamdan guilty, then it surely follows that Bin Laden's secretary, his personal tailor, and the office tea lady are equally guilty. After all, by providing services for Bin Laden they were supporting a terrorist, ergo they were supporting terrorism.

One has to wonder where all this will end. By cooking his dinner each day, for example, would Bin Laden's wife also be guilty of the crime of supporting terrorism? And what about his kids? By giving him a kiss each night before they get packed off to bed are they also guilty of supporting terrorism?

Of course, the good news that guilt by association works both ways. If Cheney, for example, is ever convicted of involvement in the torture of Guantanamo Bay inmates his own driver can presumably be convicted as well--for the horrible crime of supporting a torturer.

[Imran]

The whole thing at the Gitmo has been lopsided anyway. The basic understanding of "one is innocent until proven guilty" is not even a consideration. Might is right seems to be the case.

An employed driver is being tried for an assumed crime of his boss in a closed door trial with an unknown (or secret) jury where the prosecution and defense attorneys are assigned by the plaintiff. And everyone is supposed to accept the verdict as published (or announced). This is to be considered a completely fair system. WOW!! And then, we have Iraq story to talk about. This is not the US I have known in the last several decades.