Sunday, May 25, 2008

Gitmo's Shameful Revolving Door


Pentagon: Ex-detainees returning to fight


Cross posted from CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/07/gitmo.bomber/index.html


From Mike Mount

CNN Pentagon Producer



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Kuwaiti man released from U.S. custody at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in 2005 blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq last month, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was one of two Kuwaitis who took part in a suicide attack in Mosul on April 26, the officials said. Records show that an attack in Mosul that day targeted an Iraqi police patrol and left six people dead, including two police officers.

An announcement on a jihadist Web site earlier this month declared that al-Ajmi was one of the "heroes" who carried out the Mosul operation. A second man from Kuwait also took part in the suicide attack, the Web site said.

Pentagon officials who had been keeping track of al-Ajmi said they were aware he had left Kuwait for Syria, a launching ground for terrorists into Iraq.

A video posted on various jihadist Web sites shows a number of images of al-Ajmi, followed by text reading, "May God have mercy on you Abdullah al-Ajmi. I send you a warm greeting O you martyr, O you hero, O you, a man in a time where only few men are left."

U.S. military records of Guantanamo detainees indicate that a man with the same name and nationality was held at the Cuban prison.

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Those records said al-Ajmi, 29, was picked up in Afghanistan as he tried to enter Pakistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion. He claimed to have fought for the Taliban, the records show, and said he fought in a number of battles against the Northern Alliance. Watch a firefight in Afghanistan »

Though he was never charged with any crime, al-Ajmi was held at Guantanamo through 2005. Military documents show he later claimed that his statements about fighting for the Taliban were made after he was threatened while in U.S. custody. He asserted that he was in Afghanistan to study the Quran.

Al-Ajmi was transferred to the custody of Kuwaiti authorities in November 2005, with four other Kuwaitis, and was released after a trial there, according to Pentagon officials.

Al-Ajmi is not the first former Guantanamo detainee to reportedly return to the battlefield after being released. Pentagon officials say there are more than 10 people once held by the U.S. at Guantanamo who have been killed or captured in fighting after being released from the detention facility.

"Our reports indicate that a number of former [Guantanamo Bay] detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. Some have subsequently been killed in combat," said Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Documents provided by the Pentagon show other former detainees returning to the battlefield, including Abdullah Mahsud, who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. He returned to Afghanistan, where he became a militant leader in the Mahsud tribe in southern Waziristan, the documents said.

"We have since discovered that he had been associated with the Taliban since his teen years and has been described as an al Qaeda-linked facilitator.

"In mid-October 2004, Mahsud directed the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan. During rescue operations by Pakistani forces, a kidnapper shot one of the hostages. Five of the kidnappers were killed. Mahsud was not among them," the documents provided by the Pentagon said.

"As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantanamo," Gordon said.

Reports of former detainees returning to the battlefield show they are dedicated to their cause and have been trained to be deceptive, the Pentagon officials said, but such factors will not prevent the release of other detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

Of the more than 500 detainees released from Guantanamo since the detention camp was opened in 2002, 38 have been stripped of their "enemy combatant" status and determined to pose no future threat to the United States. The remaining 462 were repatriated to home countries or resettled to third-party countries and still considered a threat, Pentagon records show.

Some countries have since released those detainees back into the public, according to various reports.

The United States is still holding about 65 detainees scheduled to be released to their home governments. But before that can happen, the United States has to get assurances the detainees will not be persecuted or harmed when they arrive home, Pentagon officials have said.

"We have no desire to be the world's jailer, which is why the 500 were allowed to depart," Gordon said.

There are about 270 detainees still held at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba.


The above photo of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi was posted on a jihadist Web site.

A note from Radarsite: Is there a more elegant way of saying,"We told you so"? This is the outrageous and deadly result of civilian liberal meddling in what should be a strictly military jurisdiction. In choosing to deal with our "enemy combatants" captured on the field of battle as common criminals, criminals afforded almost the identical protections and rights as American citizens, we have set ourselves up for this bloody travesty of justice. We have allowed our leftist Human Rights activists and our mercenary Criminal Lawyers to infiltrate our military justice system and dictate the rules, and these are the devastating results.

So that some liberal ideologues can feel good about themselves and their exemplary humanity, we have allowed ourselves to be made fools of, we have allowed ourselves to become morally complicit in senseless murders. Our enemies are not being rehabilitated, they are merely being given sanctuary. For all intents and purposes, Gitmo has merely become a rest stop between battles. A place to study their qur'an, improve their health and reinvigorate their hatred. In short, an American taxpayer-funded R&R destination.

This is what we get when we don't fight back against the delusional liberal pacifists amongst us. This is what we get when we let them win. They win, we lose, people die.

One can only wonder -- do we have the strength and the time to turn this great Ship of State around and correct course? And do we have the will?

15 comments:

  1. Makes you wonder how many more of the Gitmo graduates are returning to the Jihad battlefield. If more and more of them show up, then we must change our tactics at Gitmo or just shoot them as we find them. I prefer the latter, keeps them from killing innocent civilians and they did want to die.

    OK I'm in one of my moods tonight.

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  2. Mood or not, I agree 100%. I've already written many times about what FDR would have done with them. The same thing he did with the Nazi spies -- he had them shot. Very quickly.

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  3. I was well aware of these Gitmo grads going onto a higher school of learning...I think their suicide diplomas are written in their own blood.
    What really ticks me off about this is the mainstream media's silence on the 'release-to-kill' partnership with the devil.

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  4. The media will remain silent as long as they have a liberal bias. They will only report on those men who have been "wrongly" accused, like this one was. I guess that they were wrong and the military was right.

    BTW Roger, your post on HC Boards is still going strong. They are having fits over the idea. It's been a Hoot reading them.

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  5. Thanks for the info Findalis. I did just check back there. But I won't comment on that article anymore. I responded to a few of their comments and then I dropped off the thread. I love to start a big fight and then leave. lol I just posted a couple more to upset them.

    PS: For those readers who may be wondering, we are referring to the History Channel Forum, where I don't think my views are appreciated too much.
    Go on over and check it out and you'll see what I mean.

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  6. Here's the History Channel url:
    http://boards.historychannel.com/forum.jspa?forumID=600000008&start=0

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  7. We have gone soft. We allow them to read the book that inspires them and then we release them. If they are caught on the battlefield trying to kill our soldiers. They should be put to death.

    You asked about posting my Italian Resistance article here. Please do. Please give me a shout out though.

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  8. Hi again EI. Thanks for the OK. I will post it and I will give you a Shout out.
    Have a nice day tomorrow (I mean today).
    rg

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  9. The problem with the revolving door syndrome is that once we're stuck in it, it keeps whirling us around.
    As outraged as we are when we see the evidence of our failure, we still fall back to 'blame games' as games are being played in the present.
    At issue here, well, in my eyes anyway, is the failure to not have been prepared legally. It's not as though September 11, 2001, was the test day. We've had years to work out proper legal procedures. (After 9/11, we started looking up answers in the back of the book, Library of Congress -[or in someone's skivvy-fronts].)
    Washington is awash with attorneys (so many their hourly rate is lower than white mice) and yet, even today, this "country of laws, not men" has not sufficiently been able to get to a reasonable starting point.
    Has anyone asked why the FBI arrestees are held longer than those caught by the CIA (& Co, Ltd., or UnLtd.). Think; chain of evidence, arrest warrants, handling prpcedures.
    Consider that renditions were initiated during Clinton as the Justice Department avoided engagement in tough stuff.
    (Out of site, out of mind, out of court; out of bounds to even discuss such non-liberal issues as enemies. Better to legislate quilting for the fuel-needy). And, shamefully, today we find our prosecutors stuck, cowering away from "leftists" in the same ruts.
    I have often said that we're a nation "afraid of itself". We're so stricken with fear of ourself; can't have shotguns mirrored in the orange Volvo, can we. We're caught wide-eyed, frozen in our path.
    (Think what I just wrote: " frozen in our path"
    "OUR".
    Our path, our woods and trails, mountains, valleys, cities and towns, schools and civic lives, religious freedoms and open press.
    Why don't we offer Grand US Tour tickets to Gitmo Alumni to remember us as they leave; (bet they'd love to take the recipe book; chicken ginger-citrone, asparagus almondine, etc. How about relics from that part of the "Unknown". You know, that part that used to say "Soldier".
    Seriously, though, they should all be given a copy of the US Constitution. That would get their eyes plucked out and their limbs severed as soon as their carpet lands in Hisassstan.

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  10. Congrats Roger you are #1 today at JBlog Central. http://www.israelforum.com/blog_home.php

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  11. There is also a chance that many of the releasee's have been turned and are agents of Great Satan - infiltrating and perhaps even rounding up t type groups like Al Qaeda and Taliban fanboys too.

    In order to increase their bona fides - the press could have been used in reporting about ex detainee's back on the fields of combat.

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  12. I could understand people's frustration with letting people out of Guantanamo Bay, but something has to be said for the damage to US reputation resulting from our abridging of detainee rights there.

    Instead of people being upset at the terrorists for being enemy combatants, the world media focuses on the US being evil for putting them there.

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  13. "abridging of detainee rights" What???

    Johnson -- I'm beginning to think you are beyond help.

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  14. Thanks GSG. I'm not sure how many of these guys might be "turned", but I'm afraid a lot of them are just plain old jihidis, who can't wait to get back to killing Americans and American allies.

    And thanks for the news about JBlog Findalis. I wasn't aware of that.
    rg

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