No ordinary driver, no ordinary cargo

EDWARD HORGAN (Letters, August 8) is either naive or disingenuous in complaining about the sentencing of Salim Hamdan by a US military court, claiming he was “sentenced for providing material aid for terrorism” for “simply earning a living working as a driver for a foreign national in a foreign country”.

Osama bin Laden, for whom Salim Hamdan worked as both a driver and bodyguard, was no ordinary foreign national.

According to a July 24 Time magazine report on Salim Hamdan, he was captured driving a vehicle which had two surface-to-air missiles in the boot. If this combination of circumstance does not constitute the provision of “material aid for terrorism” in Mr Horgan’s eyes, I fail to see what would in fact constitute such provision. The possession of a nuclear device on Pennsylvania Avenue perhaps?