And the Gorelick wall of separation between the FBI and CIA will be put back into place.
So the question I have is:
Since the barriers to a terror attack are coming down, which American city can we do without? We are effectively going to lose at least one to an attack in the next four years. I vote for SF.
And protecting the defendants always seems more important to liberals than obtaining justice for the victims.
From FOX News:
“To me it’s beyond comprehension that they would take the side of the terrorists,” said Peter Gadiel, whose son, James, was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. “Many of these people have been released and been right back killing, right back at their terrorist work again.”
“There is no need to suspend [the military commissions]. There is no reason why [Obama] can’t conduct a concurrent review at the same time that the military commission process is moving forward to render justice for the terrorists that have murdered thousands of people,” said former Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who lost 17 sailors during a suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole in 2000. A suspect in the case is being held at Guantanamo.
“It demeans their deaths because we seem to be more concerned with the rights of detainees than we are with the justice that is being denied to my sailors that were killed,” Lippold told FOXNews.com.
http://www.jtfgtmo.southcom.mil/
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Note: The following text is a quote:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52750
President Directs Suspension of Guantanamo Bay Commissions
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2009 – Responding to a presidential directive, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday ordered a suspension of active military commission proceedings at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Pentagon official said here today.
President Barack Obama, who had called for the Guantanamo facility’s closure during his campaign, directed Gates to pause legal proceedings involving alleged terrorists being held and tried there, pending further guidance from the White House, spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters.
The president directed the secretary, who then directed the Office of Military Commissions, to cease referring any new cases through the military-commissions process at Guantanamo and to request 120-day continuances on all ongoing active cases there, Whitman said.
Whitman said he anticipates that further White House guidance regarding Guantanamo Bay will follow.
“The president has clearly made his intentions well known” regarding activities at the detention center, Whitman said.
Gates has recommended shutting down the Guantanamo detention center since he was appointed defense secretary more than two years ago. In December, Gates requested a proposal for closing the facility.
Gates has stated that requirements for closing Guantanamo include constructing legislation that provides statutory framework for housing detainees outside the confines of Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters during a Dec. 18 news conference.
The defense secretary “has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down [and] what would be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility, while at the same time ensuring that we protect the American people from some very dangerous characters,” Morrell said.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 established procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses that can be tried by military commission, according to a military-commissions fact sheet.
The detention center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay has housed nearly 800 suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places since the start of the global war on terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
About 250 people are being held at Guantanamo today, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Related Sites:
Military Commissions Act of 2006
Military Commissions Fact Sheet
Joint Task Force Guantanamo
Related Articles:
Detainee Treatment Remains Key as Officials Weigh Guantanamo’s Future
Guantanamo Solution Remains a Defense Department Priority, Spokesman Says
Gates Requests Plan for Guantanamo Closure
http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/984
“National Security Court? We Already Have One”
by Bill West
IPT News
January 26, 2009
Where’s the jersey girls?
Done with their fits?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E5311E30-161A-4380-B8E6-22F5457072AB
“Change Terrorists Can Believe In”
By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thanks to Oorang (The Threat Matrix at FreeRepublic.com) for pointing to this link/article:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3665845,00.html
(REUTERS)
“Saudi issues wanted list of 83 militants overseas”
Published: 02.02.09, 23:36 / Israel News
SNIPPET: “Saudi television read the names and showed photographs of the wanted men, all Saudis except for two Yemenis, who it said had “adopted the straying ideology”, a reference to al-Qaeda. The announcement followed a move last month by al-Qaeda’s wing in neighbouring Yemen to name two Saudis released from the US military prison camp in Guantanamo as commanders.”
Thanks to a special emailer for pointing to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p1t9vi_mc8&feature=rec-HM-r2
“Pelosi: No, You Can’t Send Gitmo Detainees to Alcatraz”
(Added January 25, 2009)
Fox and FRiends is having on a family member of the USS Cole during their next segment.
So that's why Obama wanted Sec. Gates to stay on. Then, if/when things go wrong, he can blame it on the Bush administration. A plus would be Obama looks good being “bipartisan”.
Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2246589/posts
AG Holder dodges and double-talks Republican Senators’ questions about Uighur terrorists
911FamiliesForAmerica.org ^ | May 7, 2009 | Tim Sumner
Posted on May 7, 2009 6:27:26 PM PDT by Sergeant Tim
Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate today:
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., pressed Holder to say whether he believed he had the authority to release someone with terrorist training into the United States. The attorney general did not directly answer Shelby’s question, but said the government doesn’t have any plans to release terrorists.
“With regard to those who you would describe as terrorists, we would not bring them into this country and release them, anyone we would consider to be a terrorist,” Holder said. [emphasis added mine]
What does the law say? It says those who trained as terrorists or associated with terrorists are inadmissible into the United States. But Attorney General Eric Holder says it is a matter of judgment and we know his recommendation will have great influence on President Obama.
In 1999, then DAG Eric Holder released known terrorists free in the United States, by way of pardon recommendations for FALN terrorists that were approved by President Clinton. Many Members of Congress back then, from both sides of the aisle, indicated those pardons were motivated by politics, to help his boss help his wife get elected to the Senate. This January, AG-nominee Holder admitted he “had made some mistakes” yet he also said those pardons were “reasonable.” We have good reason to question his judgment and motivations.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has twice written Holder and not received an answer.
I again reiterate my questions from last month and ask that I be given the same courtesy and dialogue you provided foreign government officials in Europe last week. Just four years ago, Congress enacted into law a prohibition on the admission of foreign terrorists and trained militants into this country. Accordingly, Congress is entitled to know what legal authority, if any, you believe the administration has to admit into the United States Uighurs and/or any other detainee who participated in terrorist-related activities covered by Section 1182(a)(3)(B). [emphasis added mine]
As you know, the current administration, including President Obama, has repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for legal decisions and authorizations that were made in efforts to defend the national security of this country. It would be both reckless and hypocritical for this administration to follow this criticism by acting in derogation of the law to permit an action that could endanger national security.
Knowing what we know now, the 19 hijackers would not have been legally admitted into the United States on their way to 9/11.
That is the point about the Uighurs. They trained in the same place as al Qaeda for the same purpose and hold the same ideology: Afghanistan, terrorism, and violent jihadism. If Eric Holder will not measure the Uighurs by those facts and standards, there is good cause to question his authority under the law and personal judgment.
http://www.911familiesforamerica.org/?p=1204
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Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2246775/posts
Obama and the 9/11 Families; The president isn’t sincere about ’swift and certain’ justice
Wall Street Journal ^ | May 8, 2009 | Debra Burlingame
Posted on May 8, 2009 3:45:07 AM PDT by Sergeant Tim
News reports described the meeting as a touching and powerful coming together of the president and these long-suffering families. Mr. Obama had won over even those who opposed his decision to close Gitmo by assuaging their fears that the review of some 245 current detainees would result in dangerous jihadists being set free. “I did not vote for the man, but the way he talks to you, you can’t help but believe in him,” said John Clodfelter to the New York Times. His son, Kenneth, was killed in the Cole bombing. “[Mr. Obama] left me with a very positive feeling that he’s going to get this done right.”
“This isn’t goodbye,” said the president, signing autographs and posing for pictures before leaving for his next appointment, “this is hello.” His national security staff would have an open-door policy.
Believe … feel … hope.
We’d been had.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Note: Video included.
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http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2009/05/how-does-closing-gitmo-make-us/
“How Does Closing GITMO Make Us Safer?”
SNIPPET: “The question is fundamentally basic.
The contrarian answers are full of nuance and little sense.”
By ThreatsWatch on May 7, 2009 at 11:30 PM | Permalink
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=101745
“Guantanamo detainee set to start new life in France”
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Saturday, May 09, 2009
SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON: The family of an Algerian national held at the US prison camp in Guantanamo for seven years is delighted he is due to arrive in France next week to start a new life. Lakhdar Boumediene, 42, would be the first non-French citizen from Guantanamo to be taken in by France since President Barack Obama pledged to shut down the prison camp when he took office in January.
“I cannot hide the fact I am really happy. Soon, he is going to be freed,” his wife Abassia Bouadjimi told AFP Wednesday from Algeria.
“He really is keen to be free, and be with his wife and children,” said his sister-in-law Louiza Baghdadi, who plans to welcome him into her home in Nice, she told AFP.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said earlier in Paris that France was “finalizing details to be able to accept him in France before the end of next week.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had agreed following a meeting with Obama in Strasbourg last month to take in the detainee who was cleared for release in November.
Sarkozy applauded Obama’s decision to shut down the camp that he described as an affront to US values and democracy.”
Note: The following post is a quote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2251693/posts
America, meet your new neighbors: the Uighurs
SF Examiner ^ | 05/14/09 | Newt Gingrich
Posted on May 15, 2009 9:52:24 AM PDT by freespirited
...America, meet the Uighurs.
Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. They have been allied with and trained by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state.
As part of its ongoing effort to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has had to figure out what to do with the Uighurs. Officials believe that if they’re sent back to China they will be persecuted, and no third country will take them.
So the Obama administration has decided to set the Uighurs loose in America.
But the Obama administration’s plan for the Uighurs doesn’t stop there. At Guantanamo Bay, the Uighurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bare arms appear and hurling them across the room.
Perhaps understandably, the Obama administration believes the Uighurs will need help adjusting to American society, in which women with bare arms have been known to appear.
So last month, Obama administration Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair indicated that terrorist detainees released into the United States would receive public assistance.
By their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al-Qaida-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S. law. The goal of ETIM is to establish a radical Islamist state in Asia.
Prior to 9/11, the Uighurs received jihadist training in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a known al-Qaida and Taliban training ground. What’s more, they were trained, most likely in the weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing, by Abdul Haq, a member of al-Qaida’s shura, or top advisory council. Obama’s own interagency review board found that at least some of the Uighurs are dangerous....
(Excerpt) Read more at sfexaminer.com ...
My late Uncle's best friend, a Port Authority Police Officer, died in Tower One while helping to evacuate people.
As far as I am concerned, we should treat Enemy Combatants the way we treated them during WWII. You catch them, you interrogate them and then you shoot them. They die where they were caught. Dig a hole and throw them in. None of this weak liberal BS, War is War...