The first former Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in federal criminal court was found guilty on a single conspiracy charge Wednesday but cleared on 284 other counts. The outcome, a surprise, seriously undermines – and could doom – the Obama administration’s plans to put other Guantanamo detainees on trial in U.S. civilian courts.…The administration did not want to rely exclusively on the military commissions that the George W. Bush administration had made a centerpiece of its detention policy. President Obama’s strategy, however, has run into fierce, cross-party opposition in Congress and New York, in part because of concerns that it would be harder to win convictions in civilian court.…But the verdict was still a blow to administration officials, who were quietly confident that Ghailani would be found guilty on all charges. For some, a conviction on only one count amounted to a close call. Had he been cleared of all charges, the administration would probably have been forced to take Ghailani back into military custody rather than see him released.…”One of 285 counts is not exactly a track record for a prosecution team to be proud of,” said Kirk Lippold, former commander of the USS Cole, which was attacked by al-Qaeda in 2000. “I think the administration is now in a position where they have to get serious about using military commissions. This case sends a clear and unmistakable signal about using civilian courts: It didn’t work.”
So, in other words, if we can’t be guaranteed a guilty verdict in advance, we’re not even going to bother with the pretense of a show trial. If we don’t actually have enough fucking evidence to convict someone under this “rule of law” that makes us so much more special than our enemies, we’ll just keep you in jail anyway until we can get the result we want through a kangaroo court.
What a nation of fucking cowards.