Closing Gitmo May Be Harder Than Obama Thinks
Posted on November 25, 2008
Returning to the pre-911 mindset of dealing with terrorists as ordinary criminals, or what the left call the rule of law, is a step backwards the ACLU have pushed for and President-elect Obama has promised in closing Gitmo and giving terrorist trials in American courts. Obama may soon find out that his promise is going to be harder to keep than he expects.
The new administration will soon discover from its review of the Guantánamo files what motivated its predecessor: The scope of the terrorist threat was far greater than anyone knew on September 11, 2001. But for the Bush administration’s efforts, many more Americans surely would have perished.
This conclusion is based on a careful review of the thousands of pages of documents released from Guantánamo, as well as other publicly available evidence. In 2006, the Department of Defense began to release the documents to the public via its website. The files had been created during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearings held for nearly 600 detainees. This unclassified cache includes both the government’s allegations against each detainee and summarized transcripts of the detainees’ testimony. Although the documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Associated Press, the intelligence contained in the files was largely ignored by the mainstream press for more than two years. Thus, the New York Times reported only the day before the recent presidential election that the files contain “sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees.” …
The most dangerous men currently incarcerated at Guantánamo are the 14 “high value” detainees. The Bush administration gave them this designation because they are uniquely lethal, having planned and participated in the most devastating terrorist attacks in history. Their collective dossier includes, among other attacks, 9/11, the American embassy bombings (August 7, 1998), the USS Cole bombing (October 12, 2000), and the Bali bombings (October 12, 2002). They are responsible for murdering thousands of civilians around the globe, from the eastern United States to Southeast Asia. Had they not been captured, they surely would have murdered thousands more.
The 14 were originally held not at Guantánamo, but at even more controversial black sites. And the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that have sparked international outrage were principally designed for them. One may doubt the necessity and morality of these techniques, including waterboarding, while still recognizing a fundamentally important point: The 14 high value detainees are not ordinary criminals, but perpetrators of an entirely different order of evil.
It is because of these men, in particular, that the Bush administration initiated the preventive detention regime of which Guantánamo is a part. Processing them as mere lawbreakers would not have advanced the war on terror. To read them their rights and provide them lawyers would have been to throw away their intelligence value. It would have allowed them to carry to the grave many details of still active terrorist plots. The Bush administration chose a different route-harsh interrogations designed to ferret out al Qaeda’s current operations before it was too late to stop them or capture those involved.
Really nice of the media to leave such vital information out of its anti-Bush campaigns until now. Can we say agenda? How convenient this information becomes when a free pass is needed.
The trial of the WTC I plotters after the 1993 terrorist attack did not prevent WTC II on 9/11. This is what was meant by the September 10th mentality. Treating terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh the same as armed robbers not only ignores their real threat but also keeps the government from gaining the kind of intelligence against their networks that keeps Americans from being killed by the thousands.
The current high-value detainees probably have little intel value now, and their handling matters less than how we treat those who follow them. If we go back to the pre-9/11 approach and process them through the civil courts, we’ll pad our conviction rates and remain blind to the threats amassing against us. Obama may close Gitmo, but in the end, he’ll need to create another mechanism to do what Gitmo did for national security or wind up dropping the ball against the real threats we still face.
Oh no! Hope and Changey guy is gonna make the world love us! That is what’s important here! But hey, if they screw it up and we get attacked again…do you think the media can come up with enough free passes to get him re-elected?
If he shuts down Gitmo for PR purposes and opens up some other black op site, don’t expect the media to dig this up like they did on Bush. They’ll whistle right past it. Can we at least put tracking devices in them before we release them back into the wild? I doubt the ACLU would stand for a violation of privacy like that.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Barack Obama, Democrats, Dems In Charge: Now What?, Islamicfascism, Liberal Media/Bias, National Security, News, Obama/Biden, Stupidity, War On Terror, terrorism
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One Response to “Closing Gitmo May Be Harder Than Obama Thinks”
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Torture, torture and torture them mucho/ lotsa more. When all
valid intel value is gone, kill them. Face down in a pit, filled
with pig-poop, his corpse facing-north.
Yes, B. Hussein Obama-Osama-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong’s going to
have more-than-a-tough-time simply “closing down GITMO”, when
he learns “the truth” about a lot of the BS/ crap statements which
he made during the “unending, 2-yr election campaign from hell”. And
will all his so-called supporters finally-learn “the truth” about those
“I’ll fix ‘em” scenarios he so frequently lied about, when he daily
made all those typically-empty campaign promises? Reality won’t
be so easy to “fix”, Hussein. Go ahead and try, schmuck-boy.
I, for one, am eagerly-looking forward to seeing him *squirm and
sweat*, as he’s roundly-accused by his mentally-ill, treasonous,
seditious, hate-America supporters, of not doing “what he promised
he’d do”; that is, before he had all the facts via “daily intelligence
briefings”. Now that he’s finding-out “the truth”, what he’d
promised and what is truly possible, are on opposite ends of
the spectrum, I’m guessing.
It’s a “short trip” between liberalism and your treasonous, seditious
and hate-America pals, B. Hussein Obama-Osama-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong’.
And with you driving, it’ll be an even shorter ride. History will be the
witness to your brevity.
Popcorn, anyone?