After five years in U.S. custody, 31-year-old Australian David Hicks copped to a single plea of material support of a terrorist organization. He did so, his father and lawyers say, simply to get out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and go home to Australia, where he is to serve his sentence, which likely won't be much. The tribunal process has succeeded in making Hicks, a directionless one-time kangaroo skinner, into something of a local hero.

A senator who represents Hicks' state in Australia told The New York Times he would return "as a guilty man who has not had a fair trial. The Australian public will see through this process."

Maybe, but his history hardly suggests he's some kind of saint, either.

Hicks became entranced by radical Islam and set off to fight in Kosovo (where, curiously, he would have been on the same side as the United States and NATO), but arrived too late to participate and then pitched up in Afghanistan, where he trained in al-Qaida camps. But "the hapless holy warrior," as The Associated Press called him, lasted only two hours on the front lines before being forced to flee.

After five years, Hicks no doubt was eager to say what was necessary to get out of Guantanamo. But despite all of the criticism of what is effectively his plea bargain, let's not forget that he was indeed an enemy combatant working on behalf of the terror- promoting Taliban.