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Hamdan was not an obvious choice for this historic role. He didn't appear to be a high-ranking officer of al-Qaeda, nor was he known to have participated in any specific terrorist operations. But from America's perspective, he did have certain things going for him. Because the military-tribunal system was brand-new, the government thought it made sense to try some lower-ranking operatives first, in case anything went wrong. Hamdan had also been in U.S. custody since his capture and had not been rendered to any foreign countries for interrogation, which might open the door...
...days leading up to 9/11, Hamdan joined a small motorcade of al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who drove into the mountains to watch the hijacked planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on satellite TV. Hamdan was also at bin Laden's side--as a driver--in the weeks that followed, while the motorcade moved from one guesthouse to the next as bin Laden and al-Zawahiri readied their remaining fighters for America's imminent invasion...
...would be arrested if he tried to cross the border, so he instead dropped off his family and was planning to return the car, which he had borrowed, before finding a different way into Pakistan. Soufan and government prosecutors say that Hamdan remained in Afghanistan to fight alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Their account is corroborated by the fact that the Northern Alliance forces that captured Hamdan in Afghanistan hours after he left his family at the border found two surface-to-air missiles in the trunk...
...that, yes, Iraq was a safer, calmer place than it had been a year ago but refused to give much credit for that change to President George W. Bush's surge of some 30,000 troops. Instead, he noted in nearly every interview how the Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda in Iraq had begun before additional U.S. forces arrived. Pressed repeatedly, Obama insisted that his opposition to the surge had been correct--a claim that Republican Senator John McCain dismissed as "wrong then ... wrong...
...close to the surface the animosity between Sunnis and Shi'as remains. The way that the [Sunni] tribal leaders and the provincial officials describe the Shi'as in Baghdad was indicative of a deep-seated lack of trust. And the fact that the violence has lessened and that [al-Qaeda in Iraq] really has been routed does not answer the larger possibility of a return to sectarian violence unless that trust issue is resolved...