"Enemy Combatant" to be Freed 

"Enemy Combatant" to be Freed

In a web exclusive, Newsweek reveals that Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been held by the US as an enemy combatant for more than two years without trial will soon be released by the government under a settlement being negotiated. Among other conditions, he will have to renounce his US citizenship and permanently leave the country.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. Hamdi's arrest was trumpeted as one of Bush's great anti-terrorism victories and now it turns out there was no there there. The government has no case against him and once the Supreme Court said it was time to put up or shut up, it had to let him go. This, combined with the bogus arrest earlier this year of a Portland lawyer for involvement with the Madrid train bombings, the unraveling of the case of the Detroit Al Qaeda cell and lingering doubts about the Buffalo case, leave Bush and Ashcroft looking as if they've grossly overstated the domestic terrorism threat or they're grossly incompetent. We know the latter is true. The jury is still out on the former, though I tend to believe the threat is not as great as these guys would have us believe, at least not in the direction they're looking.