]i]The New York Times ran its editorial on the acquittal of Salim Hamdan this evening. It is mistitled Guilty as Ordered. Apparently the Times, like me, was expecting Hamdan to found guilty as Bush and Cheney had ordered.

If Salim Hamdan had been guilty as ordered, he would have been convicted on all counts, regardless of the evidence. That is what the Bushies wanted, according to Colonel Morris Davis, whom The New York Times quotes in this editorial.

The military commissions process created by a joint effort of the Bush administration and its collaborators in Congress is indeed a rigged system, or was designed to be. However, Americans apart from Messrs. Bush and Cheney and their flunkies in the Pentagon and Justice Department (I'm talking to you, Professor Yoo; are you paying attention, Mr. Gonzales? don't go to sleep on me, Mr. Addington) believe in due process and fair trials, especially trained jurists.

I was certain that Salim Hamdan would be found guilty on all charges. The Pentagon even got to hand pick the jury. We in the public would have done none the wiser, for in this misbegotten kangaroo court the evidence could be classified and the proceedings closed. The kangaroos refused to jump on the command of the neoconservatives. I think I owe an apology to Captain Keith Allred, the chief judge, and the jury for displaying a degree of professionalism and acquitting Hamdan on all charges except the one not in dispute: that he was Osama bin Laden's driver. Insofar as that in any kind of crime, it isn't a war crime. Making up reasons out of thin air to invade a sovereign nation is; torture is; and denying combat detainees due process is; but those are bridges to be crossed another day, by a band of rogues who wear western business suits rather than keffiyehs.

The verdict was not what was ordered. It is now Bush, Cheney and the other rogues who once again stand at the bar of world opinion awaiting a harsher verdict than one that could have been handed down against Osama's chauffeur. They are charged with constituting a kangaroo court so lacking in justice that the kangaroos would have none of it.

This would be a good time to revisit the military commission process, and shut it down.