The Taliban’s Version

Posted on June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 by Denise Simon

This is a transcript of the Pashto narration of a video released June 4, 2014, by the Taliban showing the release to American special forces of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

[RELIGIOUS SINGING]

[CREDITS] This video is presented by the cultural department of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Broadcasting this video with instrumental music is not permitted.

ANNOUNCER: Under the instructions of the Afghan leadership and with the initiative of the Islamic Emirate’s delegation in Qatar, negotiations have been going on for the past few months with officials of the United States of America on the exchange of prisoners detained by both sides for the last several years.

Due to those negotiations, on May 31, 2014, Bowe Berghdal, a U.S. soldier who was arrested a few years ago in Paktika province, was handed over to American soldiers during a special ceremony in the Bati area of Alisher district in Khost province.

On the same day, five heroic holy fighters of Islamic Emirate were released after having spent nearly 13 years in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo and reunited with the Islamic Emirate’s representatives in Qatar. They were: Mullah Fazl Mazloom, the army chief of staff in the Islamic Emirate’s government, Mullah Noorullah Noori, in charge of the northern regions of Afghanistan and governor of Balkh province, Mullah Khirullah Khairkhwa, interior minister and later governor of Herat province who was in charge of the southwestern region, Mullah Abdul Haq Wasiq, deputy of the National Directorate, and Mullah Mohammad Nabi Omari, who was a border brigade commander.

The release of the five heroes was received as good news throughout the world and brought tears of joy to the eyes of most Muslims.

Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid, the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sent a message of congratulations: “Thanks to Allah thanks to Allah, that because of the sacrifices of the mujahideen and best efforts of the our political office in Qatar, five senior officials of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were released safely from Guantanamo with the help of God. This great victory requires a prayer of thanksgiving to God that with the sacrifice of our fighting nation that our holy fighters were rescued from the claws of the enemy.”

“I want to thank the fighters, the Islamic Emirate’s leadership council, the men who arrested Bowe Berghdal, the men who guarded him, and everyone who contributed in this great work. I pray to God for their further success.”

Dear viewers: in this documentary you will see the handing over of the U.S. soldier and hear the commentary of a holy warrior who witnessed the event.

WITNESS: First of all, congratulations to all fighters and leaders of the Islamic Emirate. I was present in this process. We arrived at the Bati area at 4 p.m. We’d been asked where we were willing to come for the meeting. We’d also brought few tribal elders so that if they (Americans) did not trust us, we could send these elders to them. These tribal elders were there to get the trust of other side. We said that we have units near the Bati district military base and we could be there within a half an hour.

They asked where we could be and we said wherever you want _ the base or someplace else, it’s all the same. The mujahedeen control the Bati area. We gave them security guarantees. They said, “We’ll come by helicopters to the Bati area, just tell us where.” We said, “We’ll come to the base. They said no, they said “Come to the the area near the house of Naim Kuchai, a famous tribal elder, 500 meters from his house.”

[Video shows fighters chanting: “God is great! Long live Afghanistan! Long live Mullah Omar!”]

WITNESS: They said, “We’ll come by helicopter.” Big airplanes were in the air also. When we arrived to the site there were three helicopters _ two were in the air and one landed about 14-15 meters away.

The detained soldier and two of our friends were with me. They said, when you arrive at the site three persons from your vehicle should come toward us. One should be the detained soldier and two others. They said, three persons from our side would get of the helicopter. When we arrived to the site we waited 10 minutes. The helicopter approached and another bigger plane flew overhead. The helicopter landed. Eighteen armed fighters were with us in the area, and they were on the top of the hill.

We had told them that we would have armed fighters with us, and they’d said that was ok. They told us to carry a green flag, but we said we don’t have a green flag, we’ll have a white flag. I carried the white flag. I thought that they (Americans) would sit with us and we would talk, but they were in such a big hurry that they didn’t event greet us properly. We shook hands with two and the third one presented his left hand. They were in such a rush they told us not to come any closer. There were two persons, and an interpreter named Sher Khan, and we handed over their man.

They were in such a big hurry, they did not hesitate, but before they departed they asked me to tell them if his health was not good. I replied that he is in good health. They asked about his shaved head and face. I said yes, he does not have hair on his face and head.

Before he was scared, but when he saw his U.S. helicopters, he wanted to run from excitement. He became restless. I told him that they are coming down, and the helicopter landed. I wanted to speak with them via the interpreter and deliver some messages to them, but as I said they were in too much of a hurry and after the handshake, when they saw armed mujahideen with the weapons in the area, they became in an even bigger hurry. They did not even let the soldier to have a good-bye handshake with us. They did a strange thing. It was a hard scene for them. Our leaders had offered assurances, but still we could not trust the enemy.

The armed fighters were with us only for self-protection. We were all armed. When we entered there we had told ourselves that either we would all be killed or we would have brought an end to the episode in accordance with our orders. But then we heard about the released leaders, thanks be to God.

[Taliban song of praise continues as video shows the five former detainees being greeted by other Taliban officials.]

Hashim Shukoor is a McClatchy special correspondent.

Who Said Yes, Who Said No, Taliban 5

Posted on June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 by Denise Simon

All of the Taliban 5 that Barack Obama freely gave away were killers, killers of thousands. Barack Obama restored the power and the inspiration of al Qaeda and the Taliban, there is no dispute.

Gitmo has been classified as the best run detention center in the world such that there is a soccer field, air-conditioning, selected menus of food items, video games, recliners and more, so these detainees have actually been rewarded for killing.

Frankly, it was Barack Obama that was the deserter, he abandoned American national security and that of our allies. This single gift to the enemies of all Western culture can be classified as the darkest day in U.S. history and it has completely altered the war fighting an enemy and terror factions globally, virtually eliminating the any progress or success in the last 14 years.

Yet what remains in defiance of logic, even Barack Obama just a few years ago, sought in court himself to keep one of the Taliban at Gitmo

Barack Obama is now branded with the scarlet letter of ‘S’, surrender. Who said yes to the surrender and who said no is also significant. There are key overlords in the Obama administration that have worked against America in protecting the innocent wherever they are worldwide.

For years, CIA Director John Brennan and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough were part of a small group of Obama administration officials who believed that five relatively high-ranking Taliban commanders could be released under certain conditions with manageable risk of harm to American interests. For years, senior defense and intelligence officials disagreed—and were poised to block a potential trade for the Taliban five and American hostage Bowe Bergdahl.

By 2014, many of the skeptics had left the Obama administration; Brennan, McDonough, and their allies assumed new roles at the very top of the Obama administration; and the White House and its allies at State were able to convince their replacements to sign off on the deal.

“All of us on the National Security team were unanimous in supporting and recommending that we take this opportunity,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice told CNN Friday. But for years, that was not the case and Brennan and McDonough were opposed to other senior officials.

Inside the administration, some officials working on the swap of the five Taliban commanders for captured U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl did not see the prisoners as the “worst of the worst,” as many GOP senators have said this week. As far back as 2009, when the original idea of a swap was floated, some officials held the position these five prisoners were essentially Afghans dedicated to fighting other Afghans, not international terrorists.

“Look, these were not good guys. I am in no way defending these men,” State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday. “But being mid- to high-level officials in a regime that’s grotesque and horrific also doesn’t mean they themselves directly pose a threat to the United States.”

In late 2011 and early 2012, administration officials who thought the risk of releasing the Taliban five was manageable included Brennan—then the White House counterterrorism czar—State Department official Marc Grossman, and then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, who led the interagency process that ultimately decided to make an initial prisoner swap offer to the Taliban in the fall of 2011.

McDonough first became close to the President in 2007, when he was still a Senator. And Brennan’s voice carried particular weight. A former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan in 2009 became Obama’s tutor on the classified side of the war on terror and his envoy to the spies, special operators and analysts fighting that war. Brennan, McDonough, and the others were in favor of offering a prisoner swap to the Taliban only if they agreed to strict conditions on monitoring in Qatar and as part of a sequence of events aimed at getting the Taliban into a reconciliation process.

(The CIA declined to comment for this story. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

After a vigorous internal debate, the White House decided to offer the Taliban the deal in 2011, But the terms and circumstances were different than the agreement later struck between the U.S. and the Taliban in 2014.

Back in 2011, the idea these five prisoners could be released safely was opposed by Leon Panetta, who served in Obama’s first term as secretary of defense and director of the CIA. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was also opposed. But Brennan and others argued that the Taliban five were primarily focused on fighting against other Afghans and never had a record of attacking Americans outside of their own country. They had extensive ties to al Qaeda, but were focused on their own civil war, not international jihad.

“Yes they had ties to al Qaeda, but there’s no evidence at all that any of them knew of or supported 9-11 or did anything to support al Qaeda’s international agenda,” a former Obama administration official who supported that view told The Daily Beast.

All five Taliban leaders were captured in the weeks just after America attacked Afghanistan, and according to the Wikileaked classified intelligence dosiers compiled by their Guantanamo jailers, at least two of them were trying to surrender when they were detained and shipped off to Cuba. Another one may have been working with the CIA. None were in Afghanistan during the bulk of the fighting between the Taliban and U.S. forces.

“None of them actually participated in the resistance,” this official said.

Nonetheless, these arguments for years fell on deaf ears in the intelligence community. Speaking in Pittsburgh this week Panetta said of the trade for Bergdahl: “I don’t fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don’t go back into battle.”

Also, as recently as 2013, the U.S. military’s assessment of the risks posed by the Taliban five if released still assessed it was likely they would return to the fight against Americans, at least in Afghanistan.

There are some indications these warnings might someday be proven true. NBC reported Friday that one of the detainees, Noorullah Noori pledged to return to Afghanistan to kill Americans, according to a second-hand account from an unnamed Taliban commander who claimed to have spoken with him.

Those inside the administration who supported releasing the prisoners noted that the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were lobbying for their release. Karzai did interfere with the negotiations at several points, in order to protect his own interests. But he repeatedly told the Obama administration that the Taliban five should be released back to Afghanistan with no restrictions at all, according to multiple senior U.S. and Afghan officials.

“The Taliban wanted them released to Afghanistan. Karzai also wanted us to release them to Afghanistan. He objected to the transfer because of all the conditions. He said this was Afghans being transferred from one prison to another prison,” the former Obama administration official said.

The secret dossiers on the Taliban five prepared by Joint Task Force, Guantanamo Bay, judge that all five are a “high risk” to return to the fight in Afghanistan, the long-held military judgment. But they also detail the unique circumstances of the capture and transfer of these five men to Cuba.

Mohammad A Fazl, former Chief of Staff of the Taliban Army and his deputy Noori were almost surely responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Northern Afghanistan during the Taliban’s war with the Northern Alliance. They fought against U.S. and coalition forces who attacked in October, 2001, but then attempted to surrender to a Northern Alliance Commander General Dostum with many of their men only a few weeks later, according to the U.S. military documents.

“Taliban military commanders were informed if they surrendered their weapons to General Dostum, they would be allowed to return home,” the document said.

The Taliban even paid Dostum $500,000 to secure Fazl’s safe passage after his surrender. But following Fazl and Noori’s refusal to help quell a Taliban prisoner resistance at the facility were Dostum was holding them, in December 2001, Dostum handed over Fazl and Noori to U.S. forces, who sent them to Guantanamo.

Fazl and Noori both had extensive connections to al Qaeda, according to the U.S. military documents.

Khair Ulla Said Wali Khairkhwa was a notorious heroin trafficker. He was also at different times The Taliban Interior Minister, the official Taliban spokesman and the governor of Herat Province under Taliban rule. He also may have tried to defect from the Taliban after they lost the war and join up with the Afghan government. He claimed he was in the process of switching sides when he was arrested and sent to Guantanamo.

“Detainee is a friend of current Afghan President, Hamid Karzai,” his secret military file shows. “When the Taliban lost control, detainee contacted Karzai to discuss a position with the new government and detainee’s personal safety. Several Karzai associates met with detainee in the time between the Taliban’s fall and his arrest.”

Kairkhwa also tried to broker a peace in 2001 between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance with Iranian help, but that failed. Because of his ties to all sides, Karzai’s government believes he can be a helpful in achieving Afghan reconciliation.

Mohammed Nabi Omari is the only member of the Taliban five with strong connections to the Haqqani network, the Pakistan-based military group that actually held and guarded Bergdahl for his five years of imprisonment. Just prior to his arrest, he met several times with a CIA operative named “Mark,” who gave him money and tasked him to find the location of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Omari didn’t produce Mullah Omar’s location and according to him, upon arriving at a scheduled meeting with “Mark,” he was detained and sent to Cuba. He also had extensive al Qaeda ties.

Abdul Haq Wasiq was the former Taliban deputy minister of intelligence and had also been in contact with U.S. intelligence officials claiming to want to help them fund Mullah Omar. He requested a GPS device from the Americans and radio frequencies to transmit information back to the U.S. forces. He was arrested shortly thereafter. His file shows that he was crucial in joining Taliban and al Qaeda intelligence capabilities in the years before the U.S. invasion.

By 2014, when the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap deal was finally struck, the circumstances surrounding the deal had completely changed. Brennan was in charge of the CIA and McDonough was the chief of staff at a White House now firmly in control of the deal-making process. Obama’s team was planning to announce the end of U.S. combat operations in 2014 and the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by 2017.

The prisoner swap was no longer part of a sequence toward a peace process; that would now be the Afghan government’s responsibility alone. And without U.S. forces in combat, some inside the administration believed the legal justification for holding Taliban leaders as “enemy combatants” was sure to come into question.

“When 2014 ends, the White House will have to formulate a legal doctrine under which we can detain law of war detainees. They have not yet formulated that document,” the former administration official said.

The struggle over who to release from Guantanamo will rage on inside the administration between those defense and military leaders who want to keep the prisoners there and those in the White House and State Department who want to see the Guantanamo prison closed.

As for the military and intelligence officials who warned that the Taliban five were a “high risk” to Americans if they were released, the official said: “We’ll find out now that they are released if that was overstated it or not.”

Related from The Daily Beast

West Point Speech and Why

Posted on June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 by Denise Simon

Barack Obama has hidden his concern for terror threats and most often he has re-labeled it as an ‘overseas contingency operation’.

Then only recently did he give a speech at West Point explaining his foreign policy which he was forced to do for at least two reasons, the recent kidnappings and deaths at the hands of Boko Harem and the immediate release only a few days after the speech of the Taliban 5 from Guantanamo.

Okay, so where does that leave America for the next several years as Barack Obama has forced the shrinking of the United States footprint globally? Well, Barack Obama’s lack of policy and leadership with allies point to the very real possibility of NATO crumbling itself. This leaves China and Russia and especially the entire Shiite and Sunni world in a race for the top slots of globally power rankings.

In context, the lack of will and the aversion to colonialism at the hands of Barack Obama, simply removed the United States from the short list of the keepers of peace globally in six short years, something that experts predict will take at least fifteen years to ever begin to reverse, others predict as much as forty years and that is only if there is a collection of Reagan prodigies on the horizon. Not much hope so far.

One of the topic intelligence analyst with a real and candid background for saying what must be said is Michael Vickers. Here he is in his own assessment. Take it for your deep consideration.

WASHINGTON: If you want to understand why President Obama spoke so much about terrorism in his widely panned West Point speech, the head of Pentagon intelligence explained it pretty well today.

Click here to see the video of Vicker’s message.

Terrorism is and remains the top threat to the United States, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers said this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The most interesting, and some would say anomalous, threat assessment he offered: China comes in at number seven after Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the Syrian civil war, Russian “revanchism,” Iran, North Korea and what he called the “persistent volatility” across South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s right, China appears to come seventh when the Intelligence Community is planning and advising President Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. It makes sense when you consider the long-range goals China appears to have set itself and the absence of a direct confrontation — so far — between the two powers.

Now folks in the Intelligence Community may well tut tut and profess that they examine each situation as it occurs, but budgeting requires prioritization and here it is.

What does all this mean in aggregate to the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon? Vickers said, “[as] senior intelligence officials, we haven’t seen this range of challenges on an administration’s plate in our careers.” Not only is the range of threats geographically enormous and conceptually varied, they are, as Vickers noted, “these are highly asymmetric challenges.” In Pentagon parlance that means the United States military isn’t necessarily well prepared to cope with them. And there are a lot of them.

Is Mike Vickers arguing that the Intelligence Community needs to remain very well financed, even in this age of declining defense budgets? Sounds like!

Normandy, Teach Your Children

Posted on June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 by Denise Simon

From the Desk of Richard Thompson

Full reprint from: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=adf1a83154acea60d091b413c&id=1de81a1e4c&e=1bca66219c

Thomas More Law Center

Today – June 6, 2014 – is the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy.

On that day soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen braved the horrendous shelling of German shore batteries to storm the beaches at Normandy and bring down Hitler and Nazi Germany. On the eve of the invasion, General Eisenhower distributed the order to the expeditionary force of 175,000 men which closed by beseeching “the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” (Complete 1:45 audio below)

More than 2,500 American troops died on the beaches that day.

Also, in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast that day (Complete 6:30 audio below), “in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home – fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas – whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them – help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too – strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.”God Bless America

War to Luxury to War

Posted on June 4, 2014June 4, 2014 by Denise Simon

The Afghan villagers remember Bergdahl quite well mostly for the reason he was purposely heading into Taliban territory on a mission. While that State Department spokesperson is minimizing the words of the soldiers in Bergdahl’s unit, the State Department cannot ignore the words of the Afghanis.

“It was very confusing to us. Why would he leave the base?” said Jamal, an elder in the village of Yusef Khel, about a half-mile from the American military installation. (Like many Afghans, he goes by only one name). “The people thought it was a covert agenda – maybe he was sent to the village by the U.S.”

Locals remember Bergdahl walking through the village in a haze. They later told Afghan investigators that they had warned the American that he was heading into a dangerous area.

“They tried to tell him not to go there, that it is dangerous. But he kept going over the mountain. The villagers tried to give him water and bread, but he didn’t take it,” said Ibrahim Manikhel, the district’s intelligence chief.

So, let us turn to the home that the Taliban 5 left behind at Gitmo. Air conditioning, video games and recliners, soccer fields, first rate medical care and visitors were all part of the perks that the Gitmo detainees enjoyed. The Taliban 5 left this behind anxious to return to their jihad and Barack Obama aggressively and willingly delivered renewed inspiration and power to the enemy.

Military officials at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility are attempting to make force-feeding a little more fun for detainees. Some longterm hunger strikers can now kick back in a plush recliner — well, not literally, since their ankles are restrained by shackles — and play video games or watch TV while being tube fed a liquid nutritional supplement.

Detainees can choose from hundreds of video games and movies, said Milton, the Guantanamo librarian who doesn’t give out his last name. They can watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland or play Portal 2. But, say, Call of Duty: Ghosts isn’t available — Milton said the library doesn’t carry violent video games or movies.

The Taliban specifically asked several years ago for these 5 Gitmo detainees as they were to lead the U.S. paid Taliban headquarters location in Doha. At first even those on the ‘Afghan Good Enough’ team pushed back. The office later closed and now it has a new home in Qatar under the support and approval of al Thani and Barack Obama.

On the Taleban side, it was, significantly, their (officially closed, but apparently still active) political bureau in Qatar that played the key role in negotiations, as the Taleban’s official statement acknowledged. An interview (in Pashto) with office member, Nek Muhammad, highlighted the role of the head of the office, Tayyeb Agha, as chief negotiator in the talks. (1) He said they had originally intended to negotiate directly with the Americans, but then decided it was better to go through Qatar given the complexity of the issues. (This also allowed the White House to say it “doesn’t talk to terrorists.”) One other interesting detail in Nek Muhammad’s interview is his hint that Na’im Kuchi played a role in the handover. Kuchi, a former senior mujahedin and Taleban commander, was detained in Guantanamo, but ‘reconciled’ on his release in 2004 and is now a member of the High Peace Council, although not a particularly active one. Nek Muhammad said Bergdahl had been transferred to the Americans at 6.30 in the evening on Saturday 31 May in the Bati area of Alisher district of Khost province, “near the home of Sardar Na’im Kuchi.” If Kuchi did play a role in the transfer, it looks most likely to have been in his personal capacity and kept secret from the High Peace Council (as news of the deal did not leak).

In one sweeping week under Barack Obama, the American military and the coalition forces of our allies has been dismissed, the blood and treasure spent is regarded with full disdain by the Commander-in-Chief.

While there have been countless scandals during the Obama administration, the Taliban being granted a new ‘win’ in the war on terror by the White House, the real tragedy is Obama’s misplaced loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood where he clearly loves something else rather than the very America who put him in office only to betray and violate us all.

Andy McCarthy supports the sentiment, Barack Obama crossed over and makes the case on why. No signing statement, where Barack Obama decidedly took excessive power to finesse the law that he signed will or should give him the protection he thinks he built.