I’m all for going after terrorist, but I really don’t see how you get convicted for being a chauffer. Some have suggested that SHRUB and Dick could get tried for war crimes for their preemptive wars. But would it really make since to put their chauffeurs on trail?

Can you spell K-a-n-g-a-r-o-o court?

Yes,

B-U-S-H!

This is no surprise, but I am VERY curious about a somewhat related story...

Why was Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani who studied in the U.S. but who disappeared in Pakistan years ago to now show up after allegedly attacking FBI and U.S. military while in custody in Afghanistan, brought to a U.S. (NYC) courtroom to face charges? She is certainly the only terror suspect I'm aware of to face a U.S. judge, and she is not a U.S. citizen (to my knowledge), nor was she apprehended on U.S. soil.

Why here, why now? Is this politically motivated...either to get her far away from Pakistan (where her long-time disappearance has been thought to be a U.S./Pakistani imprisonment without charge), or to trot her out for a highly visible prosecution during the U.S. election cycle? It sure would help the Republican cause to remind folks that evil lurks on our own soil.

Can anyone clarify why she was brought to the U.S.?

This reporting tells me less than nothing. It is one more example of reporters legitimizing thoroughly illegal actions by failing to provide any meaningful context, thereby fortifying the false narrative.

The Salem witches were also found guilty.

Step your game up, TPM.

Thank God, we got the driver.
This is such a blow to AQaida.

This pulls the guts right out of their religious jihad, and will leave AQ reeling and unable to reform for quite some time.

I don't know how they have been surviving without Hamdan all this time, one might have expected the whole org. to just dissolve without HIM there to keep everyone in line and task oriented.

America Rocks!

Now McCain's trying to make it a campaign issue:

"I welcome today’s guilty verdict in the first trial held under the Military Commissions Act (MCA)...Unlike Senator Obama who voted against the MCA and favors giving Al Qaeda terrorists direct access to U.S. civilian courts to contest their detention, I recognize that we cannot treat dangerous terrorists captured on the battlefield as we would common criminals."

Surprise, surprise. It'll be interesting to see how/if Obama responds. Hopefully he'll remind people that Republicans didn't put much effort into capturing Osama Bin Laden, and instead decided to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

The legal theory is kinda murky here. Hamdan the driver was convicted of providing aid and support which was made into a war crime by the MCA.

However, the time period he is accused of acting in, is pre-September 2001, and thus not covered by the AUMF and no war resolutions by Congress either. Whats more, even if there was a state of war in which war crimes could be committed, the kind of support Hamdan was convicted of was not a war crime at that time pre-MCA! So if the Ex Post Facto Clause still has any force, what the heck is he being convicted of?

This is going to appeal.

The whole MCA setup is eventually going to be overturned as being defective on its evidentiary setup, its confrontation setup, and its other numerous failings. Congress set up a decidedly second-class administration of justice system and gave this second-class system the ability to deliver death penalties. .

What readers of this blog might not know is that even if Mr Hamdan had been found guilty, the detaining authority could still have held him under the theory he is a present danger.

What about Bush and Cheney's limo drivers?