And maybe they're practicing prestidigitation with explosive trucks. Yet Obama's plan seems to be only to send more back there. "Freed Guantánamo inmates are heading for Yemen to join al-Qaeda fight," from The Times, January 5 (thanks to all who sent this in):
At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country's Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.
Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year....
A Yemeni, Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, was killed in an airstrike on December 17, the Yemeni Government reported last week. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the country is Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, who was released in 2007. Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was released in 2006, is a prominent ideologue featured on Yemeni al-Qaeda websites.
Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said: "This is a large question that goes beyond the issue of transferring detainees. The bulk of the remaining detainees are from Yemen and that has been the case for a long time. We are trying to work with the Yemeni Government on this."
Yeah, that'll help.
The US Government issued figures in May showing that 74 of the 530 detainees in Guantánamo were suspected or known to have returned to terrorist activity since their release. They included the commander of the Taleban in Helmand province, Mullah Zakir, whom the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, called "a key and seemingly effective tactical leader". Among others who returned to terrorism was Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who killed six Iraqis in Mosul in 2008.The number believed to have "returned to the fight" in the May 2009 estimate was double that of a US estimate from June 2008. US officials acknowledged that more detainees were known to have reoffended since, but the number has been classified....
And as we all wait for the gasps of surprise...I think I can hear crickets.
Many, if not most, of our government leaders are living in a white tower that has nothing to do with the reality the rest of us are living in. The division between the government and the common people grows wider everyday. I am truly concerned on where this country is headed as people grow more and more annoyed/agitated/angry with the lack of respect given to them on this topic and many others.
Thank God for the prayers of the everyday person, as well as those who still remember their duty in the various military and law enforcement agencies as they work to keep us safe.
Yep, at least 12 in Yemen, probably more than 50 in Afghanistan and another 30 in Iraq, and at least five biding their time in Bermuda. No doubt, sometime within the next year or two, we'll see an atrocity vcarried out on US soil by some of those released from Gitmo, then its curtains for Obama come 2012.
"...US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism."
So it is and the question remains what do we do? After the billions spent in Iraq on the War on Terror--err I mean Overseas Contigency Operation--and the many more to come in Afghanistan combating the Taliban and rebuilding infrastructure, can we say we're defeating Al Qaeda or at least minimalizing the threat? I believe we are, and have crippled their operations 10 fold.
Let's give our military the benefit of the doubt and say they defeated Al Qaeda in Afganistan. We win, but does Al Qaeda actually lose? I believe the answer is No. Al Qaeda and its subgroups seem to be operating in Yemen, Somalia and other Middle Eastern Countries, as well as Europe, Detroit, Texas and Virginia, among others. We can't possibly start new operations in these countries, but we can keep our borders more secure. If we leave and the Middle East breaks into civil war, let 'em. Getting the terrorist leaders, clerics, etc. should be our main goal and the predator drones have worked wonders for us. Getting the right politicians in office and voting out the dhimmis will be one giant step in this war.
The people running the show have once again demonstrated sheer and complete idiocy and incompetence ..
Rewarding countries which are inhabited by islamists bent on the destruction of America with visas and citizenship is a tragic mistake. National Security trumps meaningless and absurd good will gestures.
The State Dept, as well as other Government agencies, continue to behave in pre 911 mode. They practice reactive PR policies rather than proactive and preventive defensive ones . They lock the front door but leave the back door open. They are either ignorant of or willfully deny what and who the actual enemy is , meanwhile Americans and our treasure continue to bleed. They are as pathetic as those who would try to stand up and fight Nazis without first understanding Nazism, or who would try to defeat the “Reds” without having a an understanding of communism
I really hope that just a portion of the spineless PC liberal media will give this story some air time. I'm not sure that even this is enough to stop the drum beat to transfer Gitmo Jihaddis to US prisons.