The only thing special about
Guantanamo compared to other POW camps in history
is that Guantanamo is
much more civilized than
previous camps run by the democracies.
Republican ad, May 2009, about the naive President Obama's plans to close Guantanamo.
From here.
Whether the jihadis are POWs or
illegal combatants
is not a debate I am particularly interested in.
I don't like the way that POWs - representing a nation state, wearing uniforms
- are treated as inherently
morally superior to illegal combatants - who represent no state
and don't wear uniforms.
You have to examine each case.
History is full of regular armies, representing nation states, wearing uniforms,
that butchered civilians and otherwise broke
the rules of war.
The Wehrmacht, for example,
is in no sense morally superior to Al-Qaeda.
Whatever we call them, the jihadis should be treated humanely, and
they should not be released until the war is over
and Islamism is no longer a threat to the world.
If that takes decades, tough luck. They still should not be released.
By any historical or contemporary standards, this is a remarkably civilized POW camp,
where prisoners gain weight on average
(they get more calories than U.S. soldiers),
get probably the best medical and dental care of their lives,
and each has a respected personal copy of the Koran.
At Gitmo, detainees get La-Z-Boys, pastries
by Mark Steyn:
"it surely requires a perverse genius to have made the first terrorist detention camp
to offer homemade Ramadan pastries a byword for horror and brutality."
Actually I am quite surprised that the camp doesn't allow literature
espousing "Anti-American", "Anti-Semitic" or "Anti-Western" ideology.
I'm delighted that there is some sense
and some understanding of their prisoners
among the authorities.
Gitmo Detainees Serve Time By Playing Games, Talking to Family on Skype, Taking Classes, July 13, 2010, FoxNews.com.
They have Skype online video chats with their families,
Playstation3 video games,
flatscreen TVs with 18 channels,
and access to a 17,000-book library.
"The "Twilight" series, a hit among so-called "tweens," is also popular with detainees, the camp's "librarian" said.
...
Detainees were very interested in watching the World Cup, but Guantanamo Bay is "in a bad satellite area" so "we had a little problem," he said. To resolve the issue, detention facility officials began recording [World Cup] games and playing them the next morning."
Don't these jihadi prisoners know that
Somali jihadis
kill people
for watching the World Cup?
Account of the jihadis in Guantanamo
by a U.S. Army male nurse who worked with them:
Parts
1,
2,
3,
4,
5.
Guantánamo suspects want to stay, 1 Nov 2009:
"As President Barack Obama's deadline to close Guantánamo looms, some occupants of the notorious detention centre would rather prolong their stay than be sent to maximum security prisons on the US mainland
...
Despite its reputation, the regime at the Pentagon facility on Cuba's southern coast offers privileges that would not be enjoyed at the federal "supermax" prison at Florence, Colorado, the likely alternative for the most dangerous al-Qaeda suspects."
Three suicides at Guantanamo, June 2006.
This story is interesting, but not because of the suicides.
(Why should anyone care if jihadis commit suicide?)
Rather, this
story is interesting because of the
open admission
that
these are the first deaths since the camp opened.
Some "gulag".
"Nobody died under any circumstances, suspicious or otherwise, while I was there."
(He left before the 2006 suicides.)
The jihadi scum get better medical and dental care than I do:
"The medical care available and given exceeds what the active-duty get.
Dental care is same-day or next-day
(deployed personnel can't get dental except for emergencies).
The smallest complaint is assessed immediately,
frequently with a transport to the detainee clinic or hospital
...
Anyone needing care beyond the camp's ability ..
would immediately be transported by ambulance to the Naval Hospital.
I did not witness a single ambulance run for anyone besides a detainee."
The suicides were almost certainly not an act of "despair".
As
Richard Waghorne further points out, these were three known hardcore jihadis,
and the suicide was almost certainly a political act
rather than one of "despair".
As the commander of the base said:
"this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical war against us".
Prof. Colleen Graffy
was criticised for calling the suicides "a good PR move".
But she almost certainly spoke the truth, even if people are too stupid or blind to see it.
"Based on his experience with the detainees,
his opinion is that their suicides were likely an organized political act."
"The suicide attempts and three successful suicides were an organized event designed to create worldwide sympathy for the detainees' plight - and the detainees who committed suicide did so in part
by taking advantage of the Colonel's measures to improve living conditions."
"'Not on my watch' was the biggest goal for most of us.
Many of us felt that without major changes in policy the [Al Qaeda] leadership
would eventually find a way
[to carry out successful suicides].
...
The rotation that replaced us was a fine group and would have done everything
they could to protect the detainees.
I believe the detainees just timed things to take advantage of the new rotation
before they had learned all the tricks.
The detainees tried when we came in
and we had a very sharp learning curve.
I believe that the timing of [the suicides]
[was] not an accident.
I believe that those men were ordered to die after months of planning.
They knew when new personnel came in and waited until everything could come together.
If the personnel rotation had happened a month or two later,
I'm certain the suicides would have been a month or two later as well."
What life is like for the guards:
"As part of her duties, in the last month she was there, she was assigned to the hospital ward.
She had to force feed those assholes who offed themselves the other day.
They were the meanest of the bunch and had to be tied down to get their food.
My daughter and other personnel
voluntarily submitted themselves to the force feeding procedure
also so that they could do it with the least pain for the captives.
It was very unpleasant for her but it helped her and others to understand
how to participate in it with the least stress for the recipients.
The goal was to keep them alive.
She feels that the suicides would not have happened on her watch,
but it was going to happen eventually. These guys are warriors.
By their death they have achieved a military success in the political world.
The media marches on."
Bryan Preston:
"The prisoners being force-fed are subjected to that treatment
because they are too violent to be handled any other way, and won't eat on their own.
They are assaulting our troops on a daily basis, and then Sullivan assaults them"
[the troops] "in the press.
Personally, I'd as soon let them starve
- they'll eventually come around, or not, but it's their choice.
I would not subject our troops to the inhumanity and indignity of being attacked by those animals
and having bodily fluids thrown on them. I certainly would not put female troops anywhere near them.
But we've made our policy choice, which is to keep these terrorists alive.
Those that are cooperative eat better meals than our own troops.
I think that's a shame, and that our troops deserve better. But that's the choice we've made."
Freed Guantanamo inmates who have gone straight back to the jihad
Freed Guantanamo inmates take up arms, July 28, 2007
- "At least 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.
They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan
...
the detainees had, while in custody, falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.
...
Common cover stories include going to Afghanistan to buy medicines, to teach the Koran or to find a wife. Many of these stories appear so often, and are subsequently proven false, that we can only conclude that they are part of their terrorist training."
As
Charles Johnson says:
"Good work, lefties. How many people have died because of your bleeding-heart crusade to get the jihadis at Guantanamo released?"
Some examples:
Sadeq Mohammed Saeed
- another freed Guantanamo inmate who openly says he is going back to the jihad.
Abdallah al-Ajmi.
An endless sob story about his detention.
He is released.
He then carries out a suicide bombing in Iraq.
More here.
Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi
screams his innocence at Guantanamo.
Once released, he reveals that he is an Al Qaeda fighter.
He rejoins the fight.
He is described as a "veteran guerrilla".
Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul,
freed Guantanamo prisoner, now a Taliban leader who has killed British troops.
It is revealed that he was a Taliban leader before Guantanamo.
Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish,
freed Guantanamo prisoner, later described as
a top ideologue for al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.
The Swedish prisoner
Mehdi Ghezali, "The Guantanamo Swede",
was freed from Guantanamo to return to Sweden.
He was later arrested with a group of men in Pakistan on suspicion of ties with Al-Qaeda.
The group was reportedly on its way to Waziristan.
Fahd Salih Sulayman Al Jutayli -
endless legal protest by western liberals
to free this poor juvenile prisoner in
Guantanamo.
He is released from Guantanamo in 2006.
He is later killed fighting for the jihad in Yemen.
Abdul Qayyum was freed from Guantanamo.
He is now a senior Afghan Taliban commander
fighting the US,
and is seen as
a leading candidate to be No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban.
Issa Khan, a "homeopathic doctor",
spent 4 years in Guantanamo,
released,
apparently rejoins Taliban in Pakistan.
"Issa was considered to be a commander in Tehreek-e-Taleban, the group responsible for some of the worst bombings in Pakistan in recent years."
Why does America keep freeing these enemy fighters?
These two are apparently brothers:
Yussef al-Shihri
- loud complaints by well-meaning liberals about his detention as a juvenile in
Guantanamo.
He is released from Guantanamo in 2007.
He is later killed fighting for the jihad in Saudi Arabia.
Said Ali al-Shihri,
freed Guantanamo prisoner, later described as
deputy leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
He is possibly killed in Dec 2009 airstrike.
Israel is constantly releasing enemy fighters as "goodwill" gestures,
as part of a "peace process",
or in exchange for bodies of captured Israelis,
or even just news of captured Israelis.
The predictable result: Innocents are killed by the released enemy fighters.
Israel's Perverse Moral Calculus by David Keyes, October 16, 2009.
"On September 8, 2003, I sat in Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem for several hours with friends. Twenty-four hours later, a suicide bomber walked in and blew himself up, killing seven civilians. ... The bomber, Ramez Sali Abu Salim, had been released by Israel just seven months earlier. One of the key planners of the attack, Louei Raad Barghouti, had been freed in August 2003.
Literally hundreds of Israelis have been murdered and maimed by Palestinian terrorists released in "goodwill gestures." Consider the case of Matsab Hashalmon, who was released in a prisoner exchange in 2004. He promptly recruited two terrorists to blow up a bus in Beersheva, killing 16 people. Or the case of Iyad Sawalha, who was freed in 1998 and went on the mastermind two attacks that killed 31 people and wounded hundreds. In a six-year period during the Oslo "peace" process, 6,912 Palestinian prisoners were freed, and 854 of them returned to terrorism and were re-imprisoned. In a 2004 exchange, 405 Palestinian prisoners were freed in return for one live Israeli and three dead soldiers. Those 405 ex-prisoners went on to murder 35 additional people - so far."
President Obama's naive plans to close Guantanamo
Bush kept America safe from homeland attack for 7 long years
(which no one expected immediately after 9/11).
Only months after coming into office,
Obama wrecked that record.
The worst jihadi homeland attack in 7 years
has already happened on Obama's watch.
Is he now going to free hundreds more
dangerous, committed enemy fighters?
Hanson notes the delay in shutting down Guantanamo, and:
"the reluctance ... of [Obama's] liberal supporters to extend the same sort of invective to him as they did to Bush for not shutting it down."
Poll, June 2009 shows most Americans don't agree with Obama on Guantanamo:
65 percent of Americans
oppose closing Guantanamo.
74 percent of Americans
oppose housing Guantanamo terrorists in prisons in their state.
40 percent of Americans
say Guantanamo has strengthened national security.
37 percent say it has not had much effect.
Just 18 percent say Guantanamo has weakened national security.
Obama is serious about getting away from "war" and POW camps,
and back to the "criminal" model,
with media circus trials
and unexpected acquittals.
Imagine if Britain in WW2 tried all enemy soldiers as criminals.
We would still be in court today.
Obama, 5 Jan 2010, asserts that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda:
"Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda."
"Let us get this straight: for a decade in the 1990s an ascendant al-Qaeda committed serial attacks against the U.S. ... All that culminated in 9/11. In reaction to the mass murder, ... Bush opened Guantanamo Bay - after which we have seen no successful major attacks on U.S. soil ...
So consider the logic: before Guantanamo, al-Qaeda achieved its greatest success in damaging America; after it, it suffered some of its most grievous defeats, but somehow its existence is counter-productive and a recruiting tool?
What, Pray God, was the recruiting tool on September 10, 2001?
All things being equal, the idea that a terrorist will spend a lot of time in a cell in Cuba if caught seems much less of a recruiting tool than hearing that your enemy has banned the use of "war against terror,"
made up grand achievements of your civilization,
apologized for his country's sins,
publicly bowed to prominent autocratic Muslims,
promised a public trial in New York for your heroic mastermind of 9/11, and in general blamed the war on his predecessor. All that seems quite an encouragement to join al-Qaeda in comparison to the punishment of incarceration if caught.
...
Does Obama have any notion of what enemies say and do in war? That al-Qaeda claims this week that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool hardly makes it one."
was a video game being developed by anti-American UK games company
T-Enterprise.
He is possibly killed in Dec 2009 airstrike.
Since 1995.
