I am relieved that Salim Ahmed Hamdan got his butt kicked in Guantanamo on Wednesday. For a couple of days, it looked as though Osama bin Laden's former driver was going to get away with being a chauffeur to a terrorist. Especially to a terrorist the world can't seem to apprehend.

But thankfully, this week Hamdan was convicted of "providing material support for terrorism."

He's now facing a five-and-a-half year prison term, and so he should, the callous brute. Already acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy, had Hamdan also been let off on the charge of vehicular manipulation, he still wouldn't have been set free. He's the enemy , after all.

That is heartening.

Moreover, should he mount a successful appeal of the sentence, he will not be set free.

Now that is justice. This dude was and is going to the big house no matter what.

This two-week war crimes trial is the first the U.S. has participated in since the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.

It thankfully corrects an oversight of those trials during which Erich Kempka, Hitler's driver, was not prosecuted as a war criminal.

This sets a grand new judicial precedent: drivers for dictators like Robert Mugabe, the generals in Myanmar and Omar al-Bashi of Sudan had best pause and take stock of their jobs.

At some point, they may find themselves facing long jail terms, especially if their leaders cannot be found.

I admire the U.S. for convicting Hamdan, a semi-illiterate man from Yemen, father of two, who foolishly insisted he needed a job to support his family. But I do hope the courts in Guantanamo do not stop at this one successful trial.

For example, of far greater importance is bin Laden's former cook. Who is this man? And why is he not on trial? Of course he may be hidden among the 270 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Driving bin Laden is bad enough but cooking for him is surely the very definition of "providing material support for terrorism." After all, if no one had cooked for him, he might have starved before he could kill westerners.

That dreadful man huddled over his hibachi in various Pakistani caves cooking up kebabs for Osama, is a criminal who ought to be brought to justice.

Then there are bin Laden's four, or five, wives and his 19 or 24 children. These are people who definitely come under the heading of 'providing all sorts of stuff to terrorism.' His wives give him sexual satisfaction and his children are testaments to his fecundity. The lot of them ought to be arrested.

And finally, what of bin Laden's former beard dresser? This is the man who used to keep Osama presentable for video outbursts against the West. He'd trim, fluff and comb the man's long flowing beard, so that admirers could say: "Look, there goes Osama, his beard blowing in the wind."

Of late, bin Laden's beard has looked scruffy and unkempt. The man simply does not have the panache of old so, obviously, his beard dresser has been captured and is awaiting trial.

And that is my point.

If Osama bin Laden's people are picked off one by one and prosecuted in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- never to be released regardless of the verdict -- then surely this will make the man most despondent. And we all know that's almost as good as capturing him.