Republicans rolled out their "military commissions only" counterterrorism policy at just the right time. Pakistani Scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who was caught with bomb-making instructions, was just sentenced in federal court to 86 years for her attempt to kill American military and government personnel in Afghanistan in 2008. The Siddiqui case is instructive in that it immediately debunks just about every conservative lie about terrorism-related trials in civilian court: Siddiqui's anti-Semitic outbursts were shut down by the judge, civilian due process did not hamper her conviction, and she received a harsh sentence. The average military-commissions sentence is about 13 years.
At the time, conservatives whined that Siddiqui wasn't convicted of "terrorism," as though that means that the conviction didn't count. It counted for gangster Al Capone, who was convicted of tax evasion, and it counts for Siddiqui, who will probably spend the rest of her life behind bars.
