This Just In: The System Still Works

Justice can be rendered calmly, deliberately and fairly by ordinary people, people who are not beholden to any government, even this one.

~ LEWIS KAPLAN

Those were the closing words of the federal district judge as he thanked the jury that on Wednesday acquitted the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be tried in a civilian court of all charges but one, a conspiracy rap that nevertheless will probably keep Ahmed Ghailani behind bars for the rest of his life.

Much of the crucial evidence against the U.S. embassy bomber had been thrown out because it was coerced through torture, a salient fact lost of Liz Cheney and other Bush Torture Regime apologists who were apoplectic over the razor-thin conviction and railed against the Obama administration for letting justice take its rightful course.

Senator Lindsay Graham spoke for the torch-and-pitchfork brigade in bemoaning the Ghailani trial.

"We put our nation at risk by criminalizing the war," he said without a hint of irony.

The irony, of course is that the justice system isn't broken, as the Grahams and Cheneys believe. Rather, the trial is proof that it works.

Sketch by Jane Rosenberg/New York Daily News