Salim Hamdan was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison, significantly less than prosecutors requested:

Earlier Thursday, during his sentencing hearing, Hamdan told a military court that he never suspected bin Laden was a terrorist until after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Prosecutors weren't buying his story and recommended he be sent to prison for 30 years to life.

Hamdan, speaking through a translator, gave the unsworn testimony one day after six officers convicted him of providing material support to al Qaeda but cleared him of terrorism conspiracy charges.

He will be eligible for release in 6 months:

Hamdan has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The judge has given him credit for five years of prison time.

What better way to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Ignored "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" PDB Day than with a conviction in a sham show trial?

Yup, it's been seven years since that infamous daily briefing at the Crawford pig farm ranch, an event which Bush marked by taking the rest of the month off.

The day after he received the memo, "Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday," the Washington Post noted. Today — 2,557 days later — Bin Laden still remains free and "determined to strike in U.S."

But they got his driver. Sort of.

After closing arguments Monday, Charles D. Swift, a former Navy lawyer who has represented Mr. Hamdan for years, said the two-week proceeding here had been a trial that did not follow the American rule of law and that the defense believed American courts would eventually correct the legal errors here. Mr. Swift called the military commission "a made-up tribunal to try anybody we don’t like."

The not-guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge was a setback for the military prosecutors. The charge had asserted that Mr. Hamdan joined in the conspiracy that included the 2001 and other major terror attacks by helping transport and protect Mr. bin Laden....

Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel for Guantánamo, said the defense was encouraged by the verdict. "For a team that was expected to strike out at every pitch," he said, "we at least hit a triple."

He described the conspiracy charge that was rejected by the panel as the government’s main charge, and noted that when Mr. Hamdan was originally charged in 2003 the only charge he faced was conspiracy.

So, while they don't have bin Laden, and have no convinctions of anyone involved in that conspiracy, they've got Hamdan on "material support." And, as the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years, points out they've sealed the undermining of long-standing traditions of jurisprudence:

"Hamdan’s trial violated two of the most fundamental criminal justice principles accepted by all developed nations:  the prohibition on the use of coerced evidence and the prohibition on retroactive criminal laws.

The trial will not create finality – the decision to keep these cases out of the ordinary criminal courts will produce years of appeals over novel legal issues raised by the untested military commissions system. Even after those appeals are finished, the process will never be seen as legitimate by the world.  This case was the first trial run of the commissions system, and the decision proves nothing except that the system itself should be scrapped. Terrorism-related crimes should be tried in the time-tested domestic criminal justice system, a system whose rules have been designed over the centuries with one goal: to seek out the truth."

While those years of appeals proceed, the Pentagon intends to detain all of the defendents forever, anyway, even those who are acquitted. As if that will keep the world from noticing that bin Laden is still at large and the "War on Terror" has been a complete debacle.

Several news sources are reporting that Salim Hamdan, Bin Laden's one time driver has been convicted of "Providing Material Support to Terrorism." Hamdan has been held at Guantanamo Bay since shortly after he was captured by bounty hunters in Afghanistan during the invasion, and sold to the US forces.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

http://voanews.com/...

Kevin Drum passes along more solid reasoning from two notably distinct sources: both are adamantly opposed to any surge in Afghanistan. More and more, I'm seeing people come to their senses regarding Afghanistan, and Islamic terrorism in general.

An extensive analysis of the conduct of the "War on Terror", carried out under the auspices of the RAND Corporation has concluded that an approach to fighting contemporary global "Islamist" terrorism based upon the war/military model of response has not worked, and will not provide an effective basis for tackling Al Qa'ida.

Below, I consider briefly some of the most important features of the study, as well as some of the detailed findings which tend to support Barack Obama's analysis of events on the ground in Iraq, and how to respond to the current threat.

The report runs to some 225 pages, however I have excerpted the most pertinent parts. Although there may appear to be quite a lot of quotations, in the context of such an extensive study, I think it comes within fair use. The report is extensively footnoted, I have removed these from the text below. Should you wish to read the report it is available in pdf form only here

"War" on Terror

Today at TPMCafe Senator John Kerry discussed ways our response to extremism and terrorism should be changed.  As so many well informed people have been saying all along about the "War on Terror," everything about the way our government approaches the subject needs to be rethought from the bottom up.  The basic strategy of Communist guerrilla recruiters, which was highly successful in so many places, was always to swell the ranks by winning over the hearts and minds of the local population.  Terrorist organizations have adopted roughly the same strategy.  The militaristic approach our nation has employed during the Bush years plays right into the hands of the recruiters.

More after the flip.

On the 29th of July an extremely important think tank report, paid for by the government, came forth from the Rand Corporation, a favorite of the Pentagon on National Security matters.

I heard the report early that morning on a news blip on NPR and went over to the Rand Site and found the report. I than posted about it on a number of sites as well as sent it out, all with back links.
There was also a link for a Congressional Briefing to be held on that day on the report.

Observing Senator Barack Obama during his recent international trip was generally refreshing.  Here is a potential commander-in-chief who seems to understand the broader strategic challenges that the country faces politically and militarily.  His insistence that we focus on "finishing the fight" in Afghanistan and western Pakistan is head-smackingly obvious.  Afghanistan served as the staging area for the attacks on 9/11 and an attack on those who planned that attack was just and a commonsense response.  

The all-encompassing "War on Terror" became the pithy slogan the Adminstration repeatedly deployed to conflate the just conflict in Afghanistan with that destructive and ill-concieved military adventure in Iraq.  Indeed, surveys still find disturbing numbers of Americans that believe Saddam Hussien was the 9-11 mastermind or that Al Qaeda had ties with the Iraqi government.  Too many Americans reconciled their cognitive dissonance as to the decision to attack Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, and with no ties to terrorism, by repeating these three little words.   What if we never had those three little words?

Like millions of my fellow Democrats across this great nation of ours, I have always regarded George W. Bush as a complete imbecile. I felt he was the spoiled-rotten black sheep of an elitist, possibly neo-facist family, that used his daddy's money, and his name to over-achieve, and get in over his head. I never thought there would even be a prayer of him being elected in 2000, and again in 2004 because I felt his luck would eventually run out.

By MercyPolitics from EyesonObama:

The 7th anniversary of 9/11 is right around the corner. Nobody can contest that the tragedy was the defining moment of the Bush administration, it was at the very core of most decisions made from the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq to the Patriot Act and the massive spying on American people.

jimstaro has already diaried this story, but it's not getting the attention it deserves.

jimstaro focuses mostly on the difference between what has been done by the current administration compared to what RAND suggests.

I'd like to focus on the politics of it in this campaign. Follow me over the jump.

The title above comes from a new Rand Corporation Report

After 7 years of conflict and occupations, with 893 coalition deaths -- 556 Americans, in Afghanistan and increasing, and 4,438 coalition deaths -- 4,124 Americans in Iraq and increasing, with tens of thousands of injured and maimed, physically and mentally, and millions of innocents in both countries killed, maimed, living as refugee's, fighting each other in sectarian civil wars, living in ethnically cleansed neighborhoods and area's in Iraq behind huge concrete blast walls, this "Think Tank?" comes out and says:

U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida

Current U.S. strategy against terrorist organization al Qaida has not been successful at limiting the group's capabilities. Since Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks than ever before and over an increasingly broader range of targets.

Note: Tybalt had a diary up on this a few hours ago, but unfortunately it scrolled off. - o.h.

The just-released report (PDF file) from the Department of Justice's inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility surprised no one here with its finding that the Alberto Gonzales-led DOJ broke the law with its handling of the hirings and firings of federal prosecutors.

In light of these recent revelations of cronyism and worse in the Bush Administration, I thought it appropriate to reprise something I wrote last year. Incompetence is immaterial when sycophants are elevated to positions of authority. It seems that genuflecting to the Altar of Bush is all that is required to advance in this administration.
-- jp

“Goodling’s use of political considerations in connection with these details was particularly damaging to the Department because it resulted in high-quality candidates for important details being rejected in favor of less-qualified candidates. For example, an experienced career terrorism prosecutor was rejected by Goodling for a detail to EOUSA to work on counterterrorism issues because of his wife’s political affiliations. Instead, EOUSA had to select a much more junior attorney who lacked any experience in counterterrorism issues and who EOUSA officials believed was not qualified for the position.” (136)

The DOJ's report (compiled by the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of the Inspector General) on politicized hiring practices contains a politically explosive finding that could be a valuable weapon in the Democrats' arsenal against the Republican party as we prepare for the fall elections.

I know this will not be a popular diary but I don't care. It's coming up on the 7th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th. Both my wife and I were here in New York City on that horrible day. We were not married at the time and met soon after the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan on Pearl Harbor Day of 2001. Watching our city attacked, our magnificent towers fall to the ground was a mind numbingly terrifying event. Within weeks NYC was a target of the yet to be solved anthrax attacks. By late October of 2001, we had invaded Afghanistan and we just a few years later we invaded and occupied Iraq.

Summary: I've been waiting for this moment all week.  When "WALL-E" came out, there were complaints on the Internet from the Political Right about how that movie was trying to sell us Leftwing propaganda.  Surely, when "The Dark Knight" came out, and argued that not even superheroes should be trusted with dictatorial powers, someone was going to see this, equate Batman with George Bush, and interpret the movie as a critique of the "necessary" measures that Mr. Bush implemented in his fight against terrorism.

So when Keith Olbermann (recently called a "propaganda Pez dispenser" by Stephen Colbert) informed us during WPITW about the Wall Street Journal's comparison of Mr. Bush and Batman, I knew that my moment had arrived...though not as I'd expected.

Sometimes good intentions and an excess of smarts aren't enough. It's true in politics and it's true in movies.

Case in point John Cusack's War, Inc. It's ambitious, occassionally brilliant but mostly a mess. How I wish it were otherwise. This country needs a good political satire. Unfortunately this one ain't it.

Read on, MacDuff!