Hamdan sentenced to 5 months … but indefinite detention

Thursday, a military judge sentenced Salim Hamdan to five and a half years in prison for his conviction for material support of terrorism (as opposed to the life sentence prosecutors asked for). He will receive credit for at least 61 months of the six years that he has already been held at Guantanamo [...]

Ambiguous result in terror conviction

Today, an American military panel at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, convicted Salim Hamdan of material support for terrorism. He was acquitted of conspiracy, but still faces a possible life sentence.
This was the first conviction by the controversial military tribunals and an ambiguous “victory” for the Bush Administration.  The failure to secure a conviction on the [...]

Bush isn’t Batman. He’s Two-Face.

The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed by one Andrew Klavan, who makes the case that “The Dark Knight” is an allegory for the War on Terror. In this scenario, Batman is a stand-in for George Bush, the man who makes unpopular decisions to do what is ultimately right.
But Klavan somewhat misses the point [...]

Guantanamo: the Nexus of Youth and Terror

The appearance of children on the battlefield is nothing new. Nor is the reality that a significant percentage of the people who take part in uprisings in any given part of the world are teenagers. In the west, most of us have been shocked at some point by pictures of children in the [...]

32 Years of Bush-Clinton (and Jenner)

As has often been noted (in reference to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton), 1976 was the last Presidential election without a Bush or a Clinton on a party’s ticket. That means you have to be at least FIFTY years old to have had a choice that doesn’t include one of those two families. 1976 [...]