“Task force created to combat al Qaida in Afghan prisons,” by Mark Seibel for the McClatchy Newspapers, October 5 (thanks to Paul):
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration took steps Thursday toward confronting a troubling al Qaida presence in Afghanistan’s prison system, announcing the creation of a military task force to oversee detention operations there and naming a prominent military lawyer to be its deputy commander.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had called for the task force’s creation last month in a strategic assessment that included dire warnings about the prison system.
“There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan,” McChrystal wrote. “Unchecked, Taliban/al Qaida leaders patiently coordinate and plan, unconcerned with interference from prison personnel or the military.”
The Afghan prison system, including a U.S-operated detention center at Bagram Air Base, also helps create future insurgents, McChrystal said. That’s because “the Afghan people see U.S. detention operations as secretive and lacking in due process” and because “hardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders,” McChrystal said.
“They are using the opportunity to radicalize and indoctrinate them,” McChrystal warned….
All of that could be said to be going on in U.S. prisons. How long will it be before anyone notices?