Wanna hear something fucked up about the War on Terror? No, seriously. I mean, want to hear something really, really fucked up about the War on Terror?

So there's this guy, and he's been chauffering Osama bin Laden (funny how we can find this guy but not his boss, right?), and he gets picked up by counterterrorist forces and taken to Gitmo. God only knows what happens to him there, but later on he's tried for supporting terrorism and for conspiracy to murder. Conspiracy with whom is never fully articulated, but then such details aren't exactly salient in a military tribunal. I digress. This guy has the deck stacked against him: the jury was made up of uniformed officers handpicked by the Pentagon, and the prosecution was allowed to use evidence never seen by the defense--evidence that may well have relied on hearsay and may have been acquired through torture.

Does this guy look familiar?

Turns out that he's acquitted on the charge of conspiracy to murder, and he gets five and a half years for supporting terrorism. Since he's been detained for five years or so, he might be released in another few months. Justice carried out, right? Well, here's where the fucked up part steps in: after he finishes his sentence, the Pentagon will still hold him as a so-called "enemy combatant".

That's right: the Bush administration rigs the proceedings, and when that fails to get the result they demand, they just go ahead and do as they please anyway.

Now, I don't know the details--after all, this is a show trial and such details aren't exactly shared with the public--so I don't have any special thoughts on Salim Hamdan as an individual. I doubt he's totally on the up and up, and I doubt he's some kind of Al-Qada Sith Lord. I mean, you can't be totally oblivious to what's going on when you're driving bin Laden around ("This seems to be the limit for RPGs in the trunk, sir!"). But then again, he's just the driver, and I can't imagine he would be consulted on the Al-Qada actions for precisely the reason that he might get picked up for being bin Laden's driver.

Dude's innocence is not the point here. I don't know why, but I'm kind of surprised that, after the goddamn show trial that was an international embarrassment for our Crusade in the Name of Democracy, the juridicial proceedings were completely discounted by throwing this guy right back into the slammer.

If she weighs the same as a duck,
she's made of wood, and therefore, a witch.

So the press has covered this affair as a rebuke to the Bush administration, in so far as their "legal strategy" did not yield the desired verdict. Kind of funny that people are making so much of the rebuke, though, when it's clear that the verdict doesn't mean a damn thing to the administration in the first place. It's clear that they're not interested in anything more than the appearance of legal legitimacy.

UPDATE: Hamdan will be released, according to a report published some 3 months after the show-trial. Could it be that the Bushies are trying to get on the good side of the history books, recognizing the inevitability that Obama will close down Gitmo?

UPDATE: As of 8 July 2009, the Obama administration is claiming the right to detain non-citizens accused of terrorism "even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission." Looks like that gesture to close down Gitmo is all but symbolic.