A few years ago, Marc Thiessen wrote a book titled Courting Disaster. The spirit of the book delivers proven evidence that interrogation of enemy combatants kept America safe and offered up more actionable knowledge in the terror networks globally. Thiessen provides names, organizations and lobby groups in full opposition of black sites and Guantanamo. One needs to understand all the moving parts before they offer criticism of decisions by the Bush administration.
So as Barack Obama entered the White House, his first move was to close Gitmo while almost 7 years later there are 140 detainees still there. The question is why? The team known to be the go-to operation to close Gitmo has also proven some success in getting terrorists released from the ‘other’ Gitmo, the prison(s) in Colorado that actually has more detainees than Gitmo.
These wars across the globe against terror networks involves hundreds of thousands of fighters, hence in begs the question, who no capture and interrogate? Is killing the via drone since all ground hostilities have been terminated effective? Terror cells have grown exponentially including al Nusra, Daesh, AQAP, Boko Harem and more. Their operating territory has expanded in the last 6 years as well.
Here are some facts that cannot be disputed.
If you knew who was behind “Close-Gitmo” push, you’d be shocked
On Saturday, January 11, a coalition of “Close-Gitmo” forces is expected to march on Washington to commemorate the 12th anniversary of detention and interrogation operations.
Though the march from the White House to the National Museum of American History is purportedly about advancing “human rights” and “stopping torture,” a closer look at the key participants reveals a more troubling, some might say hidden, agenda.
If more Americans knew who is behind this campaign, there would be nationwide outrage.
While everyone is for “human rights” and “stopping torture,” Americans should not be fooled by these false flags meant to damage U.S. power and prestige.
Dig a little deeper into who has been driving the anti-Gitmo disinformation campaign these past 12 years, and you will discover an international, fervently anti-American, far-left coalition attacking the nation through a savvy propaganda effort.
Just dig a little deeper into who has been driving the anti-Gitmo disinformation campaign these past 12 years, and we discover an international, fervently anti-American, far-left coalition attacking the nation through a savvy propaganda effort.
This includes those linked to Al Qaeda financiers, communist groups, anarchist movements – backed by sympathetic press and politicians.
Regrettably, it’s a coalition President Barack Obama has sided with in his priority to release as many Al Qaeda, Taliban and “affiliates” as humanly possible.
Let’s take a look at the key players:
Amnesty International. Along with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International was revealed as partner organization to Al Karama, a human rights non-profit run by Qatar’s Abdul Rahman Omeir Al-Naimi.
Al-Naimi was recently exposed by the U.S. Treasury Department in December 2013 as a long-term major financier of Al Qaeda. According to an expose by Eli Lake in the Daily Beast, “Terrorists for Human Rights,” the Treasury Department’s designation said he, “oversaw the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars to Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen over the last 11 years.”
Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR was founded by far-left civil rights lawyer William Kunstler in the 1960s, a man who told the press his goal was to “destroy society from within.”
Kunstler represented the “Chicago 7,” a group that was charged with conspiracy to start a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and later he defended domestic militant/terror groups like the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, and Attica Prison Rioters.
CCR is currently funded by groups like the “1848 Foundation,” named after the year Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published and revolutions swept through Europe.
Kunstler would be proud of CCR’s signature work over the past decade in coordinating the “Gitmo Bar Association” of 500 lawyers representing detainees.
Reprieve. A British organization led by blogger Andy Worthington, it pressures release of British citizens and residents. Ethiopia’s Binyam Mohammed, a British resident, allegedly plotted to blow up high rise apartment buildings in the U.S. with a dirty bomb; Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, and Shafiq Rasul, a.k.a., the Tipton Three, ethnic Pakistanis went to fight for jihad in Afghanistan but were caught by the Northern Alliance in Nov. 2001; and Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen with British residence, alleged to have led a unit of Al Qaeda fighters in Tora Bora, and reportedly a former close associate of Usama Bin Laden, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui.
World Can’t Wait. This organization is believed to have been founded by members and supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party & Anarchists. It organized at least 24,000 supporters during Iraq War, including actor Sean Penn and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.
Jason Leopold. Leopold is a former Los Angeles Times investigative journalist with a checkered past. According to Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz, writing in a 2005 Washington Post feature, “Leopold says he engaged in ‘lying, cheating and backstabbing,’ is a former cocaine addict, served time for grand larceny, repeatedly tried to kill himself and has battled mental illness his whole life.”
So these are the folks Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress are trying to appease by releasing more Gitmo detainees?
Nearly half the current population of 155 may be freed under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014.
It would be comical if the stakes weren’t so high.
We’ve already seen Al Qaeda re-take Fallujah, site of the Iraq War’s bloodiest battles, just two years after Mr. Obama’s ordered withdrawal. And Al Qaeda and/or “affiliates” killed our Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi.
Speaking of which, a Fox News report this week by Catherine Herridge reveals that the State Dept. will finally designate ex-Gitmo detainee, Libya’s Sufian Bin Qumu, and his group, Ansar Al-Sharia as “foreign terrorist entities” for their roles in the Benghazi Consulate attack.
Does Mr. Obama really think it’s in America’s security interests to free more terrorists from Gitmo, nearly one-third of whom have already returned to terrorism?
The silent majority must take this opportunity to speak up. Preventing the next Al Qaeda attack may depend on it.
J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander who served as a Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-09. He serves as senior adviser to several Washington-based think tanks.
***
Military tribunals have proved excruciatingly slow and imprisonment at Guantánamo hugely costly — $800,000 per inmate a year, compared with $25,000 in federal prison.
The criminal justice system, meanwhile, has absorbed the surge of terrorism cases since 2001 without calamity, and without the international criticism that Guantánamo has attracted for holding prisoners without trial. A decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, an examination of how the prisons have handled the challenge of extremist violence reveals some striking facts:
Lengthy sentences. Terrorists who plotted to massacre Americans are likely to die in prison. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, is serving a sentence of life without parole at the Supermax, as are Zacarias Moussaoui, a Qaeda operative arrested in 2001, and Mr. Reid, the shoe bomber, among others. But many inmates whose conduct fell far short of outright terrorism are serving sentences of a decade or more, the result of a calculated prevention strategy to sideline radicals well before they could initiate deadly plots.
¶ Special units. Since 2006, the Bureau of Prisons has moved many of those convicted in terrorism cases to two special units that severely restrict visits and phone calls. But in creating what are Muslim-dominated units, prison officials have inadvertently fostered a sense of solidarity and defiance, and set off a long-running legal dispute over limits on group prayer. Officials have warned in court filings about the danger of radicalization, but the Bureau of Prisons has nothing comparable to the deradicalization programs instituted in many countries.
¶ Quiet releases. More than 300 prisoners have completed their sentences and been freed since 2001. Their convictions involved not outright violence but “material support” for a terrorist group; financial or document fraud; weapons violations; and a range of other crimes. About half are foreign citizens and were deported; the Americans have blended into communities around the country, refusing news media interviews and avoiding attention.
About 40 percent of terrorism cases since the Sept. 11 attacks have relied on informants, by the count of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, which Ms. Greenberg headed until earlier this year. In such cases, the F.B.I. has trolled for radicals and then tested whether they were willing to plot mayhem — again, a pre-emptive strategy intended to ferret out potential terrorists. But in some cases prosecutors have been accused of overreaching.
Do we really want to close Gitmo? Do we really want to keep these terrorists in prisons around the homeland? They are quietly being released by the Justice Department while being radicalized still during their prison terms. Do you know where they are now?
