This week, the first trial of a Guantanamo Bay detainee got underway.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan is charged with being an al Qaeda terrorist and the personal driver of Osama bin Laden after being picked up in a vehicle near the Afghanistan border transporting rockets. He claims he was simply returning a car he borrowed, which is less like the excuse a terrorist would have and more like the excuses you hear on Parking Wars (worst show ever).

With the media sure to be closely following the historic trial, we are expecting the eventual film version to be the legal drama of the year:

Salim Ahmed Hamdan (Luis Guzman) was just a cheery mechanic from Yemen, with nothing but a car and a smile. Oh yeah, and his boss was Osama bin Laden.

After being caught by a platoon of American soldiers, he is sent to Guantanamo Bay for detention. Via flashbacks during 24-hour interrogations, the story of his past is unraveled as finds himself drifting back to comforting memories of his wife (Kathy Najimy) and fun-loving, best pal Amir (DJ Khaled, in his feature film debut)

Meanwhile, an aging, down-on-his-luck Lieutenant Commander, Charles Swift (Dennis Quaid), cursed with a stubborn heart and heading headlong into alcoholism, has been thrust into the nation's spotlight to try the case that no one else had the guts to try. They told him it would ruin his career, but Swift told them right back: "Ruin my career? I got nothin' to lose. You can't even scrape my career off the floor. Because it's where my heart is: below the floor; under the floor down in the basement, where there is another floor, and that is the floor it's under."

Working together, Hamdan and Swift must find a way to prove that the Bush administration military tribunals are unlawful, all under the watchful eye of tough but fair Judge Keith Allred (M. Emmet Walsh), who's quick with the one-liners, but just as quick to put out-of-line counsel in their place. (His first target: testimony coerced by overzealous CIA and FBI agents, played by Benjamin Bratt and Channing Tatum.)

Can Hamdan be trusted? Right now, just about no one trusts him, except maybe that snappy, blonde Dana Perino (Jennie Garth) the young White House Press Secretary who is forced to denounce him publicly, but keeps catching herself staring into his deep Yemeni eyes.

Find out if Hamdan and Swift prevail, or if, yes, this former terrorist was, in fact, driving surface-to-air missiles across the Afghanistan border in the trunk of his car, in...

A TIME TO DETAIN INDEFINITELY Posted by: Kevin Allocca      I’m a fan of Kevin Allocca