“I commend the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances. They and all our Armed Forces continue to serve this country with valor in the fight against terrorism.  That the Hamdan trial – the first military commission trial with a guilty verdict since 9/11 – took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the Administration’s legal framework. It’s time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice.  And while it is important to convict anyone who provides material support for terrorism, it is long past time to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the terrorists who murdered nearly 3000 Americans.”

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“I welcome today’s guilty verdict in the first trial held under the Military Commissions Act (MCA). This process of bringing terrorists to justice has been too long delayed, but I’m encouraged that it is finally moving forward. I supported that legislation, which was a good-faith effort by Congress to meet the Supreme Court’s direction to establish a process to bring terrorist detainees to trial. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a trusted confidante of Osama Bin Laden, was provided a full hearing of the charges against him and was represented by counsel who vigorously defended him. The jury found that the prosecution lawyers had proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hamdan had aided terrorists by supplying weapons to Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan.”

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Responding to McCain campaign adviser Charlie Black’s recent statement that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be “a big advantage” (Fortune) to Sen. John McCain’s candidacy, reader Tom Cheung writes:

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) faced boos in defending his record on immigration Thursday in a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):

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Mitt Romney suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday after a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries. As voters became preoccupied with economic concerns, the former Massachusetts governor ran on the idea that a successful venture capitalist like him could repair the economy. “I spent my entire life in the real economy. I know why jobs come; I know why they go,” he said in a speech after losing the Florida primary in January. “The economy is in my DNA.” A professed free trader, Romney also was quick to show his support for ailing U.S. industries he believed were allowed to lag competitively in the global economy. Such was the case in his native state of Michigan, where he promised to bring back manufacturing jobs that his rival, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), said were lost.

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The final Republican and Democratic debates before the January 3 Iowa caucuses were judged ho-hum affairs by the political media. Surging Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, however, continues to generate great interest and a scramble for information about his views. Some takeaways from his new essay in the winter edition of Foreign Affairs: Read more »

“Closing and relocating the facility to the heartland of the United States, as some have suggested, would pose an undue risk to innocent Americans and, as today’s arguments demonstrate, could have profound legal implications. So long as it remains a vital tool to keep America safe, I will fight to keep Guantanamo Bay open.”

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Democrat John Edwards unveiled a plan to improve treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Edwards says he would increase breaks for soldiers between tours of duty.

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Continuing CFR.org’s partnership with Economist.com, CFR Fellow Steven Cook guest blogs on Democracy in America this week. In his latest entry, Cook looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) predicted the next eight months will determine whether the United States will win in Iraq. “If things go south again and we have significant setbacks, then I think the American people are probably going to demand that we get out, no matter how I feel and no matter how I am convinced about what the consequences of failure are,” he told the Nashua Telegraph.

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