1 in 7 Freed Gitmo Detainees Return to Terrorism
Posted on May 20, 2009
Wow, for all the talk lately about Barack Obama’s bright idea of closing Gitmo, transferring detainees to the United States, and even releasing some into the U.S., and giving them welfare….who needs important details like how many freed Gitmo detainees went back to terror?
Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo…
The report was made available by an administration official sympathetic to its findings who said the delay was creating unnecessary “conspiracy theories” about the holdup…
“If we hold it, then everybody claims it’s political and you’re protecting the Obama administration,” said a [DOD] official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “And if we let it go, then everybody says you’re undermining Obama.”…
Among the 74 former prisoners that the report says are again engaged in terrorism, 29 have been identified by name by the Pentagon, including 16 named for the first time in the report. The Pentagon has said that the remaining 45 could not be named because of national security and intelligence-gathering concerns…The Pentagon has so far provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people who are identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.
Is anyone else having fun watching Obama and the Democrats backpedal on all the hope and change? Hasty decision? Ya think? The ACLU are NOT happy!
These military commissions are inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional and incapable of delivering outcomes we can trust…
Despite the administration’s efforts to improve the system, the only explanation for reviving it would be to accommodate the damage that has already been done by the Bush administration’s policies of torture, illegal detention and denial of fair trials.
They can all keep playing finger-pointing games in Washington. The bottom line is that jihadi recidivism is real, deadly, and no longer just a Bush thang.
Seems like an easy solution here: If administration officials already have the report, they could take the decision out of DOD’s hands by releasing it themselves. Which, I suppose, is precisely what they did in essence by leaking it to the Times. Better to push it out there now, while the plan to close Gitmo is momentarily deceased, than to let it linger and go through another clusterfark down the road after it’s resuscitated.
One in seven released detainees return to engaging in terrorism. But let’s move these people into our domestic prison system and/or release them on our soil. Fantastic idea.
Throughout the week, White House officials have said that Obama will try to put the question of his exercise of executive power in the context of what he inherited from the Bush administration, the court decisions that force the administration to change course almost every day, and the state secrets that he must now defend, even though, had he had the chance to redo decisions, they never would have been on the verge of being revealed.
Hope and change! The New York Times article linked above quotes “terrorism experts” to the effect that a 14 percent recidivism rate is really pretty low. Of course, that’s just the number that we know have returned to terrorism. There is no way to know how many others have not yet been identified or apprehended.
Meanwhile, here in Minneapolis, a Canadian Somali named Mohammed Abdullah Warsame has pled guilty to aiding al Qaeda and may be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, followed by deportation to Canada. Warsame has been incarcerated since 2003, and his case has been something of a cause celebre among liberals. In the plea agreement announced today, Warsame admitted that he collaborated with al Qaeda beginning in 2000 and provided material support to the terrorist organization, fought with the Taliban and attended terrorist training camps. Authorities say that he once dined with Osama bin Laden. If nothing else, the Warsame case illustrates the difficulty of using the federal courts to deal with terrorists.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Constitution, Democrats, Guantanamo Bay, Islam, National Security, News, Politics As Usual, War On Terror, military, terrorism
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3 Responses to “1 in 7 Freed Gitmo Detainees Return to Terrorism”
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Senator Durbins’ vote on Gitmo is insane.The New York Times making Terroists recidivism rates as low is insane.
the aclu and obumba need to take a flying screw at a rolling donut . the time of the FAIRY TALE UTOPIA LIBERAL FANTASY LAND IS OVER . the saying goes and nothing tells me different “that while not evry islamist is a terrorsit , every good islamist is a terrorist ” its time we get back to the basics and become the christian nation obumba says we are not anymore . get our people back to work and stop the insanity of obumab and his porkulas bills 1,2 etc etc . keep in mind al-quieda doesnt torture people they saw your head off will a dull knife and teach their children to do the same . i would agree on turning the detainees loose though on a couple conditions 1. any terrorist act by an islamic would result in the immediate deportation of all islamic peoples from usa territories ship them back to their own contries and let them deal with them , one or two boatloads of deported islamics and they would all become rather peacefull . is it not quite evident thes islamics have zero respect for human life , mad as heck so what do they do terrorist bombings in their own contries killing their own citizens .
1 out of 7….that we know of…