The "Out Here On The Perimeter" comment (url in part 1) points to some more links, which are worth reading for their own opinions:

The thrust of the Corn article (below) is the need to articulate a clear standard for what is a "war" - since, without a "war", how can we speak of "war crimes" ?

The Hamdan Trial: Can Three 'Rights' Correct a 'Wrong'?
JURIST Contributing Editor Geoffrey S. Corn, Lt. Col. US Army (Ret.), a former Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters and currently a professor at South Texas College of Law, says that Salim Hamdan's recent military commission trial - in which he was called as an expert witness for the defense - should remind us that true legitimacy for the US military commissions has never been and will never be defined by the role of the military in the commission process, but instead by the process that civilian leaders create for that role...
http://www.terraplexic.org/review/20...perimeter.html

The thrust of Marty Lederman's comment (below) (I think I referenced it somewhere in "War Crimes") is similar to Corn's - "what is a war"; as well as whether the Ex Post Facto Law Clause applies. He raises this point, which should be of interest to all serving military officers - especially those in special ops - and to those in the CIA who are responsible for paramilitary activities:

.... But what's the theory under which it [delivery of weapons in a war zone] is a war crime? The government's argument is that any attempt, like this one, to aid in the killing of U.S. forces on a battlefield is a violation of the laws of armed conflict if it is committed by an unprivileged combatant, i.e., a nonuniformed person.

This is a fairly radical theory -- that any belligerency by nonprivileged persons is itself a war crime. If I'm not mistaken, it would mean that CIA officials and many U.S. Special Forces are not only regularly violating the domestic laws of the nations where they operate, but are committing war crimes. Can that be right? .....
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/08/w...ch-hamdan.html

Marty Lederman's post (like "Out There") also refers to this post by Heller, which is a good example of "special pleading" (IMO). It generated 27 comments - some worth reading.

Why Hamdan’s Material Support Convictions Violate the Ex Post Facto Clause
by Kevin Jon Heller
As Marty points out in his post, whether convicting Hamdan of “material support for terrorism” (MST) violates the Ex Post Facto Clause will be a major issue in Hamdan’s appeal. Having now read Judge Allred’s decision carefully, I strongly disagree with his conclusion that it does not. ....
http://opiniojuris.org/2008/08/07/wh...-facto-clause/

This is a very short (non-legal comment) by Patrick Lang, with this little message to all you colonels and prospective colonels out there:

Hamdan will be released before the end of the year [JMM: we shall see]. The six officers have all had soldier or sailor drivers. They decided that they knew what the role of a driver is, and that this role did not justify further confinement for Hamdan. ...
....
The prosecution sought to use this military commission to communicate a message to the world. This message was to be that any association with any group the United States chooses to call "terrorist" will lead, at the least, to a long, long prison sentence.

The prosecution's, and presumably the Bush Administration's, desire to send that message was thwarted by six officers who preferred justice. Colonels can be unpredictable people.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_s...n-will-go.html

Andy Worthington has written many, many articles on GWOT, OEF and OIF - all of a very critical bias - so, there were no surprises here - it does provide a decent picture of what happened at the trial (AW's opinions aside, IMO):

A critical overview of Salim Hamdan’s Guantánamo trial and the dubious verdict ....
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/200...bious-verdict/

Also in the critical catagory is this from Dave Glazier at National Security Advisors ("A national security law blog"), which sets out the issues and does not "brief" them:

The Hamdan Verdict - A Government Stroke of Fortune?

The verdict returned by the trial panel (no one should ever mistake a group hand selected by the authority responsible for the decision to prosecute as a "jury') in Guantanamo today reflects extremely well on the six officers given the unenviable task of participating in a badly flawed system. The government is already proclaiming the outcome as vindication of the commission process. The ironic reality is that the partial verdict - conviction on five specifications of providing material support to terrorism but acquittal on the charge of conspiracy and three other specifications of providing material support - is actually a much better outcome for the prosecution than a more complete conviction would have been. By limiting the grounds on which the defense can appeal, the verdict as returned largely saves the government from its own egregious overreaching.
http://natseclaw.typepad.com/natsecl...mdan-verd.html

Glazer also (as does Marty Lederman above) comments on this:

The judge's instructions to the trial panel, which failed to state that delivering missiles to be used against military forces constitutes a war crime also ultimately works to government advantage in my view. If the government had prevailed on this point, it means that everyone from Ronald Reagan to Charlie Wilson, to my colleagues at the Pentagon during my service in the South East Asia branch of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1984-85, to the CIA folks involved in supporting the Mujahidin in Afghanistan during the Soviet Afghan war are war criminals. While U.S. prosecutions for such conduct are obviously unlikely, such an outcome could have consequences from emboldening nations like Russia to press charges to the more mundane but perhaps real possibility that they might persuade some U.S. judges to overturn the conviction to avoid attaching this stigma to fellow Americans.
Of course, saying that something is so doesn't make it so, since one can find exceptions to every rule.

The question is what are the rules ? We all can probably agree that modern warfare - especially in its paramilitary aspects - has raced far ahead of the neat, little boxes contemplated by the GC, etc. They have about as much direct relevance today to unconventional warfare, as the neat, little boxes at Waterloo have today to conventional warfare.