What a quandry.
The United States is “relatively close” to making decisions on what to do with an initial group of Guantanamo Bay detainees, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday.
……The attorney general did not say how much longer he thought it would take to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. Before officials can meet President Obama’s January deadline, the U.S. must first decide which detainees to put on trial and which to release to the U.S. or other countries.
Holder said the first step is to decide how many total detainees will be set free.
“We’re doing these all on a rolling basis,” he said. “I think we’re probably relatively close to making some calls.”
Gee, where do we dump some of the most ruthless muslim terrorists on the planet?
……The Obama administration is edging toward taking some Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S., most likely to Virginia. They are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, and their supporters say they never should have been at Guantanamo in the first place.
The Uighurs are part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and trained at camps affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Link: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20113.pdf (page 5)
They belong in GITMO along with the rest.
Republicans in Congress say Guantanamo should remain in operation and are mobilizing to fight the release of detainees into the United States.
Against that backdrop, Holder hoped to reassure skeptical Europeans without generating too much public opposition back home. After meetings in London and Prague, the attorney general is to give a speech Wednesday night in Berlin about Guantanamo.
Austria’s interior minister, Maria Fekter, has insisted her country would not take any prisoners.
“If the detainees are no longer dangerous, why don’t they stay in the U.S.?” she asked.
More importantly, why aren’t they shipped back to their countries of origin?
Simon Koschut, an associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, spoke of the difficulty facing Holder in trying to find a consensus among European leaders.
“In Germany, many are asking why America isn’t taking care of its own business. If you started it, you ought to finish it,” Koschut said.
What? Last I checked, the muslims started this ‘holy war’. The bulk of the fighting and the job of finishing it has never been in question. It rested on America’s shoulders from day one.
So much for “We stand with you”.
There are about 240 Guantanamo inmates. As many as 60, if freed, cannot go back to their homelands because they could face abuse, imprisonment or death. They are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Several European nations, including Portugal and Lithuania, have said they will consider taking such detainees. Others are less interested and don’t want their neighbors to accept any prisoners either, because of the ease of travel within the European Union.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/04/26/holder-pleads-europeans-gitmo-detainees/
‘They could face abuse, imprisonment or death’? I hardly think so, especially since the countries they came from are primarily responsible for their creation.
They’ll just pick up where they left off; planting IEDs, beheading, and strapping bombs to themselves so they can blow everyone to smithereens for ‘allah’.
The Obama administration is willing to place these prisoners on domestic American soil thereby placing the burden and safety of its citizens at stake over and above his rhetoric and campaign BS to close Gitmo.
Gitmo is the safest and best place to house and hold for trial ALL non-domestic prisoners of war. This President is a loose cannon of BS and Marxism for sure!
Most of these men were rounded up by Pakistanis for bounties. Most were simply fleeing the war and have not been near a battlefield.
Some have given information on their colleagues; those may well be at risk if they return home.
Tragically, the Bush orders forced such aggressive interrogation of many that the prosecution of most and the further incarceration of most is now hopelessly illegal.
The Uighurs – like most detainees – have not even been accused of a crime. Bush took them as a favor to China. With most of these men, only their captors have broken the law; the captives have mostly not.
As to “planting IEDs, beheading, and strapping bombs to themselves” – you can bet that if there were ANY reason to believe these fellows were guilty of that, the USA would have the goods on them. With most, there is no evidence whatsoever except whatever rumor the person who turned them in used to get his payment.
A few of these people are very dangerous. Some hate America now who did not when they were first abducted. But Rumsfeld’s insistence that these were “the worst of the worst” was just political BS to get people off his back. Most will just want to get home and get back to earning a living and starting over with their families after missing much of their children’s childhood (just like our own), and begin the struggle of trying to patch together a life in very hard times, and in the grip of PTSD – just like our own.
Monte,
I’m supposed to feel sorry for them?
The information we got resulted in successfully thwarting innurmerable attacks. Aggressive interrogation that results in saving American lives is bad because…..?
Terrorists have no such hesitation over ‘legalities’. We’ve hamstrung ourselves to the point where some people (the Obama regime) have less of a problem with terrorist atrocities than what it takes to stop them.
Read: The Uighurs are part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and trained at camps affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Link: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20113.pdf (page 5)
Guess what they were doing in Pakistan. They belong in GITMO along with the rest.
We already had the goods on muslim terrorists we captured. What do you think earned them a trip to GITMO?
Newsflash: I’m a retired Soldier, Iraq War veteran, and former Intelligence Analyst with considerable experience in counter-terrorism. They didn’t get an 8×10 at Guantanamo by acting like Boy Scouts.
Ah yes, the old standby of “we created terrorists where there were none”. I’m raising the bullshit flag on this one. Islamic terrorists existed long before GITMO. The frequency and proximity of the attacks grew in size and scope, until it culminated in 9/11. Several terrorist attacks occured on Bubba Clinton’s watch—Khobar Towers, USS Cole, the U.S. Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and the FIRST attack on the World Trade Center in 1993—all of them went unanswered. Instead, he wagged-the-dog in Somalia and the Balkans.
Contrary to your fairytale ending:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/former-gitmo-terrorist-back-to-jihad/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/al-qaeda-leader-was-freed-from-gitmo/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/ex-gitmo-prisoners-pick-up-where-they-left-off/
They get over their PTSD pretty quick.
SFC MAC