Shutting down Guantanamo Bay

[AMDScooter]

Jan 2009..



that was then..

[AMDScooter]

Yup.. it's official. Now all I need to sit back and wait for every moonbat that railed against GWB for the exact same activity to protest the Post Turtle.

New Obama EO establishes indefinite detention at Gitmo

Allahpundit noted yesterday the reversal of Barack Obama on the issue of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, but as it turns out, that was not the most significant about-face at the White House yesterday. The Washington Post reports that Obama paired the executive order restarting the military commissions with another that re-establishes indefinite detention of dozens of inmates at Gitmo, a practice that Obama blasted as a candidate during the 2008 election cycle:

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there.

The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay’s continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy. …

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the order vindicated Obama’s predecessor. “I commend the Obama Administration for issuing this Executive Order,” he said in a statement. “The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush Administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorists until the cessation of hostilities.”

The executive order applies to at least 48 of the 172 detainees who remain at Guantanamo Bay. An inter-agency panel led by Justice Department lawyers determined that this group could not be prosecuted in military commissions or in federal court because evidentiary problems would hamper a trial. But intelligence assessments also concluded that these detainees remain a serious threat and could not be safely repatriated or resettled in a third country. The administration said it will hold reviews for detainees it plans to prosecute but has not charged.

As King states, the policy of holding those captured in a time of war until the end of hostilities has simply been common practice in warfare for centuries. The problem this creates for these specific detainees, who are also unlawful combatants under the rules of war and therefore not covered by most of the Geneva conventions for POWs, is that this war will almost certainly have no formal end. However, that is not the fault of the US but of the terrorists that have conducted warfare against America for almost 20 years, going back to the first World Trade Center attack and through the deadly suicide attack on the USS Cole before 9/11.

When the Bush administration made that argument, his political opponents accused him of “shredding the Constitution,” among other acts, and demanded habeas corpus rights through the federal courts. Barack Obama was one of those critics, arguing in June 2007 that not only did Gitmo need to be closed but that “we’re going to restore habeas corpus. … We’re going to lead by example – by not just word but by deed. That’s our vision for the future.” Even before taking office, his team began hitting the backup lights on that statement, however. By May 2009, Obama himself began hinting that Bush’s policy may not have been so bad after all.

Obama can certainly try to shift blame on the military-commissions reversal on a balking Congress. It’s going to be more difficult to say the same with indefinite detention. Those 48 cases wouldn’t have come to the federal courts in any circumstances, whether Congress blocked funding for detainee transfers or not. Obama had a choice to put them up for military commissions and let the chips fall where they may, but apparently doesn’t want to risk letting some very dangerous men out of Gitmo to have them return to conducting warfare against the US. That’s entirely Obama’s decision. Will he have the grace to admit that his predecessor made the right call on refusing to release unlawful combatants while hostilities continue? I’d call that … unlikely.

Yup.. any minute now..

[AMDScooter]

Our resident leftist Constitutional scholars sure seem silent of late...

Obama Ratifies Bush
The Administration embraces military tribunals at Gitmo.

[AMDScooter]

Thanks for wastin many millions more trying to give show trials to guys who said they would plea guilty in military tribunal years ago sh*t-4-brains P-Turtle administration...

Holder: Gee, I Guess We Should Try KSM In A Military Tribunal

Yes, they keep changing their positions. That indicates a flip-flop. But the more important thing, it seems, is that it keeps revealing how hollow, callow, naive and glib all their previous positions were; how superficial and poorly considered; how cheaply political their unending "everything Bush does is wrong" partisan seditions were; how their childish and empty their previous fantasias were.

We keep hearing from this crew how hard presidentin' is and how they must be given some leeway.

If only they'd appreciated the difficulties of presidential power while they were insisting we give it to them.

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, the CBS News Investigative Unit has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

So glib. So glib. Everything before was so easy and all the answers were so obvious.

Where is the "shredding the constitution" crowd been anyway? &

[bk94si]

Amazing how many times this guy has done 180s now. He must be getting dizzy. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

[Dutchcedar]

In this regard, he's doing everything Boosh did, but without the screams from the left.

Post turtle's campaign spin about Gitmo is gonna be a hoot.

Mulligan.

[Keven]

Post turtle's campaign spin about Gitmo is gonna be a hoot.

Yes, I'm sure somehow a reason will get invented that will blame Republicans. That reason will get repeated over and over again on the DailyKos and HuffingtonPost, and soon it'll become fact in the mind of liberals across the country.

[tucker]

Yes, I'm sure somehow a reason will get invented that will blame Republicans. That reason will get repeated over and over again on the DailyKos and HuffingtonPost, and soon it'll become fact in the mind of liberals across the country.

The Clinton Doctrine... If you lie long enough and often enough it becomes true...

[tucker]

The Clinton Doctrine... If you lie long enough and often enough it becomes true...

Revisionist history, concider the the lies your children are learning in school.

[BlackDragon24]

Yes, I'm sure somehow a reason will get invented that will blame Republicans. That reason will get repeated over and over again on the DailyKos and HuffingtonPost, and soon it'll become fact in the mind of liberals across the country.

Kos spin

Caving to fearmongers: KSM to be tried in military panel

politics—once again—trumps all

[Keven]

Kos spin

Caving to fearmongers: KSM to be tried in military panel

Well, they blame Holder for "caving to fearmongers".

You know, all those "Tea Party" fearmongers.

They don't have to say it, but you and I both know they're thinking it.

[AMDScooter]

Because despite all that "dopeychange".. the joint is still open for business.

CNN Whitewashes Gitmo Detainee’s Career

There has been no shortage of articles written from the perspective of the Guantanamo detainees’ lawyers and advocates. The result, more often than not, is a wildly inaccurate picture. A CNN.com piece (“Ten years on, Kuwaiti inmates fear indefinite Guantanamo detention”) published by Jenifer Fenton earlier this month is typical of the genre.

Fenton’s article features the story of a Kuwaiti Gitmo detainee named Fayiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari (who was given the internment serial number 552). A D.C. district judge denied al Kandari’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, citing the substantial evidence against him, in 2010. According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment written in 2008, al Kandari was deemed a “high” risk to the U.S. and its allies. JTF-GTMO also recommended that al Kandari remain in detention. And al Kandari’s own lawyers told Fenton that it is “likely” the Obama administration has decided to detain him indefinitely. So the Obama administration, which approved for transfer 65 percent of the detainees remaining at Guantanamo as of January 2009, determined that al Kandari was too dangerous to return to Kuwait.

According to Fenton, however, al Kandari’s “case illustrates the difficulties of establishing who may have had links with al Qaeda and similar groups in the chaotic aftermath of 9/11, the strength of evidence against them, and whether they might remain or become a threat today if freed from detention.”

That is certainly true for some of the detainees who have been held at Guantanamo. It is not true for al Kandari.

Fenton’s piece is a 1,900 word whitewash. Only about 100 words are devoted to the evidence amassed by the U.S. government against al Kandari even though there are dozens of declassified and leaked pages dealing with his case. A good example of the piece’s bias is the comparable amount of attention (also about 100 words) given to former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who Fenton describes as a “British Muslim.” This, as I’ve detailed on numerous occasions in the past, is also a whitewash. (See here for my latest piece on Begg.) Begg is an admitted jihadist and U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Begg had numerous ties to al Qaeda terrorists. But Fenton uncritically cites Begg as saying “he never heard another detainee say anything about Al Kandari being associated with known terrorists or terrorists [sic] activities.”

The absurdity of Begg’s claim is easy to demonstrate. Al Kandari’s own admissions, relied on by the D.C. district court in denying his habeas petition, showed that he “associated with known terrorists,” including Osama bin Laden’s chief spokesman. According to evidence entered into the court record and leaked JTF-GTMO files, other Guantanamo detainees implicated al Kandari, too. Several detainees, for example, identified al Kandari as being at the battle of Tora Bora in late 2001.

The rest of Fenton’s piece is filled with claims by al Kandari’s “friends and relatives,” lawyers and advocates. The result is that CNN’s online audience was left with little sense of who Fayiz al Kandari really is.

An “implausible” cover story

Al Kandari’s advocates have long claimed that he was a simple charity worker who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Fenton repeats this canard in the opening lines, telling readers that al Kandari’s “stated purpose” for traveling to Afghanistan “was to do charitable work, assisting with the reconstruction of two wells and the repair of a mosque.” Fenton adds that al Kandari’s charitable trip “was for the sake of his mother who had cancer so there would be ‘more blessings from God on her behalf,’ according to a member of the Al Kandari family.”

Later, Fenton notes in passing that prosecutors say al Kandari’s charity story is “not true,” but she does not bother to investigate why.

Al Kandari and his attorneys presented D.C. District judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly with this same tale. The judge deemed it “implausible” and “not credible,” for a variety of reasons. Al Kandari couldn’t explain what he was doing inside Afghanistan during a “missing” two-month period, which the judge found odd for a supposedly innocent charity worker. Moreover, the “charity” al Kandari claimed he served is named Al Wafa, which is a known al Qaeda front and was long ago designated a terrorist entity by both the U.S. and the U.N. In addition to shuttling al Qaeda terrorists in and out of Afghanistan, al Wafa served as a cover for al Qaeda’s anthrax program.

When al Kandari reached the Al Wafa office in Kabul, he told authorities, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s spokesman, was also present there. As the judge noted, al Kandari was aware that Abu Ghaith is a member of al Qaeda. (U.S. intelligence officials conclude that al Kandari was a close associate of Abu Ghaith.) Al Kandari admitted he knew of other men, also known al Qaeda members, who were at the Al Wafa office as well.

In late 2001, al Kandari made his way to the Tora Bora Mountains. Al Kandari tried to offer a benign explanation for this, but the judge demonstrated that his story, once again, does not make sense. Tora Bora was a particularly difficult location to access, and al Kandari's presence there was consistent with Osama bin Laden's call for reinforcements against U.S. and allied forces. The judge found that al Kandari “was given a Kalishnikov rifle and taught how to use it by an individual who was more likely than not associated with al Qaeda and/or the Taliban.” Al Kandari also “met and associated with various members and high-level leaders of al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated enemy forces…many of whom were actively engaged in fighting the United States and its allies."

The “high-level” al Qaeda terrorists al Kandari admittedly met included Ibn Sheikh al Libi (who ran the Khalden terrorist training camp, which graduated many terrorists including some of the 9/11 hijackers) and Abdul Qadous. Al Kandari admitted that “Qadous, like Al Libi, was leading a group of fighters at the time Al Kandari met him in Tora Bora.” Al Kandari “further advised that he had heard Qadous had previously been in charge of the Al Farouq training camp, al Qaeda's primary Afghan basic training facility.”

Al Kandari later tried to deny that he made these admissions, but the judge did not find his denial credible. Fenton does not mention any of them.

Attack on U.S. Marines

As in other habeas proceedings, the district court did not weigh all of the intelligence and evidence, finding that al Kandari’s admissions were enough to justify his detention. In addition, some of the intelligence was most likely not entered into the court record. But U.S. intelligence authorities concluded that al Kandari was an especially well connected al Qaeda operative. He allegedly served as a spiritual advisor to Osama bin Laden and gave talks encouraging martyrdom at al Qaeda’s Afghan training camps, as well as at the Islamic Institute in Kandahar. Prior to 9/11, the Islamic Institute was used by al Qaeda to indoctrinate would-be martyrs. It says much that al Kandari allegedly taught at the Institute.

JTF-GTMO detected al Kandari’s ideological influence in an attack on U.S. forces that occurred after his capture. Fayiz al Kandari repeatedly told U.S. officials that he met a man named Anas al Kandari, who is Fayiz’s cousin, at the al Wafa office in Kabul. Anas told Fayiz that Anas and his associate, Jassem al Hajeri, “had recently received military training at the Libyan camp in Afghanistan.”

Fayiz later tried to retract this admission and for good reasons – Anas al Kandari and Jassem al Hajeri were members of an al Qaeda cell that attacked U.S. Marines on Faylaka Island, off of Kuwait’s coast, in October 2002.

One Marine was killed and another was wounded. U.S. officials concluded that Fayiz “mentored and advised Anas al Kandari and other members of the six-person cell” that carried out the Faylaka Island attack. JTF-GTMO also concluded that Fayiz, Anas, and the aforementioned Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, received “advanced sniper training” that was arranged by Osama bin Laden’s guards. Some of bin Laden’s sons allegedly took part in the training.

[AMDScooter]

^^^ Cont..

Identified by “High Value” Detainees

According to a leaked JTF-GTMO threat assessment, dated April 15, 2008, Fayiz al Kandari was repeatedly identified as an important al Qaeda figure by high value detainees in U.S. custody. Top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah identified al Kandari “as a scholar” and told American officials that he taught “at the Islamic Institute in Kandahar where [al Kandari’s] responsibilities included making audio tapes in 2001.” The tapes likely included propaganda for al Qaeda.

JTF-GTMO concluded that al Kandari was “an al Qaeda propagandist who produced pamphlets, jihadist recruitment video and audio tapes, and wrote newspaper articles paying tribute to the 11 September 2001 hijackers.” (Al Kandari may have even had limited foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, according to the leaked JTF-GTMO file.) One of the tapes was entitled, “Jihad, Your Way to Heaven.” Thousands of copies were, according to one captured jihadist, distributed in Kuwait. Other recordings, distributed online, encouraged recruits to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and elsewhere.

Zubaydah, who was subjected to waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, told U.S. officials that al Kandari received weapons trained in the Khalden terrorist training camp in 1997. (The reporting from Zubaydah appears to be dated in the years after he was subjected to controversial interrogation techniques in 2002. Some of the reporting, for instance, apparently comes from 2005.)

Al Kandari himself admitted at some point in custody that he knew Zubaydah, who allegedly helped facilitate al Kandari’s travel.

Another high value detainee who identified al Kandari is Hassan Ghul. Ghul is best known for his role in giving up crucial intelligence that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden’s demise. Namely, Ghul provided intelligence on bin Laden’s chief courier, who years later was followed to bin Laden’s safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Along with Zubaydah, Ghul identified al Kandari as “a scholar who brought many religious books with him to Khaldan.”

Still another high value detainee who identified al Kandari is Mohamedou Slahi. According to the JTF-GTMO file, Slahi “reported [al Kandari] is well known among other JTF-GTMO detainees as a religious advisor,” who “held speeches in al Qaeda training camps and at the front lines.” Slahi was one of al Qaeda’s recruiters for the 9/11 plot and was one of the few detainees held at Guantanamo who was subjected to a specially approved, and harsh, interrogation program.

A fourth important Guantanamo detainee who identified al Kandari is an Egyptian named Tariq Mahmud Ahmad Al Sawah. In a separate leaked JTF-GTMO file, dated September 30, 2008, U.S. intelligence analysts identified Sawah as an al Qaeda explosives expert who designed, among other deadly inventions, the prototype for the shoe-bomb used by Richard Reid in his failed December 2001 terrorist attack. Sawah “continues to be a highly prolific source and has provided invaluable intelligence regarding explosives, al Qaeda, affiliated entities and their activities,” according to the JTF-GTMO threat assessment.

Sawah identified al Kandari as a “religious instructor” at al Qaeda’s al Farouq training camp. Al Kandari allegedly trained there at the same as several of the 9/11 hijackers.

Behind the wire, JTF-GTMO’s analysts concluded, al Kandari continued to provide “religious” instruction by issuing fatwas that promote “suicide and deadly attacks against JTF-GTMO personnel.”

A Whitewash

There is still more to al Kandari’s story, but CNN could not find the time to report any of it The same can be said for the other Kuwaiti detainees (both current and former) mentioned in Fenton's piece. Instead, Fenton questioned whether al Kandari “might remain or become a threat today if freed from detention.”

JTF-GTMO, on the other hand, concluded that al Kandari would be a “high” risk to security if freed. The leaked threat assessment of al Kandari reads:

It is assessed detainee will rejoin extremist elements if transferred. Detainee will continue to use his religious background to seek a leadership position in the Islamic extremist community. Detainee will continue to recruit and mislead youth to follow a path of militant jihad which will place them in environments opposing U.S. and Coalition forces.

You wouldn’t know that, or much of anything about Fayiz al Kandari, if you only read CNN.com’s article.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Shameful how the MSM covers for our enemies.

[AMDScooter]

Add another to the list of ex-guests to be found back on the battlefield.

FORMER GITMO DETAINEE & Al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Afghanistan Raid

What a shock. Another Gitmo detainee returns to a life of terror.

NATO troops killed Al-Qaeda leader and former Gitmo detainee in an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan. Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007 after five years of detention, had been organizing attacks in eastern Kunar province and funding insurgent operations.
Dawn reported:

Nato forces say they have killed a former Guantanamo detainee who was a ”key affiliate of the al-Qaeda network” in an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan.

Nato says Sabar Lal Melma organised attacks in eastern Kunar province and helped fund insurgent operations.

The military alliance says he was in contact with senior al-Qaeda members in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Troops surrounded Melma’s house in Jalalabad city on Friday night.

Nato spokesman Capt. Justin Brockhoff says Melma came out of the building holding an AK-47 assault rifle and was killed. Several other people were detained.

Who would have ever imagined that this Islamic terrorist would return to a life of jihad after his stay at Gitmo?

[AMDScooter]

Why it seems like just yesterday some sh*t-4-brains was claiming closing GITMO was "part and parcel to regaining our moral stature in the world". Well.. neither has happened. Was he right in the wrongest way? Anyway.. looks like the number of these animals we set free that return to their jihadi ways is on the rise.

Guantanamo Recidivism Rate Climbs Higher

During a joint hearing of the Senate and House intelligence committees yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that the recidivism rate for former Guantanamo detainees has risen to an estimated 27 percent. The total number of “confirmed” and “suspected” recidivists, according to Clapper, is now 161.

The latest assessment is higher than the previous one offered by the DNI in December 2010. At the time, the DNI estimated that the recidivism rate was 25 percent, and included 150 “confirmed” and “suspected” recidivists.

According to the DNI’s December 2010 report, confirmed cases are those in which a “preponderance of information” identifies “a specific former GTMO detainee as directly involved in terrorist or insurgent activities.” In suspected recidivism cases, “[p]lausible but unverified or single-source reporting” indicates “a specific former GTMO detainee is directly involved in terrorist or insurgent activities.” Engaging in anti-U.S. “statements or propaganda does not qualify as terrorist or insurgent activity” in either confirmed or suspected cases.

The U.S. government’s estimate of the number of ex-Guantanamo detainees who have returned to jihad has steadily increased over time.

In June 2008, the Defense Department reported that 37 former detainees were “confirmed or suspected” recidivists. On January 13, 2009—seven months later—Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that number had climbed to 61. By May 2009, when a recidivism assessment was leaked to the New York Times (the report was based on information available as of mid-March 2009), the Defense Department had found that same metric had risen further to 74—exactly double the Pentagon's estimate just 11 months before.

The Obama administration confirmed in February 2010 that the recidivism rate was then 20 percent, meaning that more than 100 former Guantanamo detainees were either “confirmed” or “suspected” recidivists at the time. By December 2010, the number had climbed even higher—to 150 former detainees. And now, that estimate has risen again—to 161 ex-Guantanamo detainees.

“Many of them have been taken off the battlefield through kinetic encounters,” Clapper explained, with respect to the recidivists.

One of these “kinetic encounters” occurred earlier this month, when Afghan and coalition security forces killed a former Guantanamo detainee named Sabar Lal Melma and captured another ex-Guantanamo detainee during a raid in Afghanistan. Melma, according to an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) press release, was “a key affiliate of the al Qaeda network” and “responsible for attacks and financing insurgent operations in the Pech district, Kunar province.”

Melma was also “in contact with several senior al Qaeda members throughout Kunar and Pakistan.”

As of December 2010, most of the recidivists remained at large. The DNI reported that 13 were dead, 54 were “in custody,” and an additional 83 remained “at large.” The current breakdown of killed/captured versus at large recidivists is not publicly available.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.