Obama’s Third Way: Release the Terrorists

National Review ^ | March 3, 2009 | Andrew C. McCarthy

[george76]

Binyam Mohammed, who planned terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, has been set free.

Let’s imagine we’ve captured a highly trained terrorist al-Qaeda was attempting to embed in the United States, à la Mohamed Atta and company, to carry out mass-murder attacks in American cities. For eight years, our national-security debate in the United States has been divided into two camps on these cases.

In the first are those who accept the post-9/11 law-of-war paradigm. They would have that enemy combatant detained for intelligence purposes (and to remove him from the battlefield) until he could be tried for war crimes by a military commission, and then either executed or imprisoned for life.

In the second are those who uphold the pre-9/11 law-enforcement paradigm...

Each of these philosophies has benefits... Both have downsides.

Here’s the problem: The hypothetical suggested in the opening paragraph, is not hypothethical: It is the real case of a real jihadist, an Ethiopian named Binyam Mohammed. And, rejecting both military and civilian justice, the Obama administration has come up with its own third way: releasing him.

Mohammed is an Ethiopian-born jihadist...he joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and met personally with Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda figures. He received extensive, sophisticated terrorist training. In 2002, when he was finally apprehended in Pakistan, he was almost certainly en route to the United States to conduct attacks with José Padilla (who has since been convicted of terrorism offenses).

Padilla is notorious as the alleged “dirty bomber” because he — along with the lesser known Mohammed — studied the possibility of constructing and detonating a radiological bomb in an American city.

[george76]

Binyam Mohammed is almost certainly a worse offender than most of the 245 remaining combatants.

If Obama thinks releasing a dangerous terrorist who planned attacks against Americans at home is consistent with his obligation to protect our nation, whom wouldn’t he release?

[HiTech RedNeck]

“Not my hot potato, man!”

[HiTech RedNeck]

Not till one of these chaps comes back to bite us in the arse a second time will the matter be seriously looked at.

[Atom Smasher]

I have a sickening feeling that Zero doesn’t want to protect our nation. Perhaps he’s got a “ticket to ride” by these terrorists that promise Zero many virgins if he brings the United States to it knees!

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Sadly they will take out both butt cheeks and the left will say “We did not do enough.”

[HiTech RedNeck]

I think he sees his future, and it looks like Jimmy Carter’s. So why not play it all like a cool fool now. He can lam it back to Kenya when it’s all over, and let the GOP deal with the mess he made.

[RC2]

Impeachment is also an option.

[Atom Smasher]

I agree with your notion here! We’ll just have to find us a good tracker when he leaves for Kenya...

[Atom Smasher]

Impeachment is also an option.

##########

This is what I hope comes of voting in all new seats in the 2010 election. Maybe, just maybe, we can get people in who will start the impeachment process...

[ActrFshr]

Looks like he’s trying to make friends, hoping they’ll remember his kindness and not attack again. At this point, I really hope he’s right, because if he’s wrong, some of us won’t live to be angry about it.

[livius]

Obama has no interest in protecting this nation. It’s not his country, for one thing, and he is actually 100% on the side of the terrorists and feels that he has come into power to carry out the jihad on behalf of the Islamic Third World in which he spent his childhood.

That may explain why he’s not interesting in punishing them...

[keats5]

I’d rather not believe your theory, but really, nothing else makes sense.

[tankrlm]

” Looks like he’s trying to make friends, hoping they’ll remember his kindness and not attack again.”

HUH???Yes lets make friends....sarc.

[Candor7]

This promises to . How long will it take for the Mossad to que up and start assassinating these terrorists ? Not long IMHO.

This is not really catch and release, the CIA will be leaking info to the Mossad, I bet.And I hope.

[Fred Nerks]

SOURCE

The following is a statement released Monday by former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed:

"I hope you will understand that after everything I have been through I am neither physically nor mentally capable of facing the media on the moment of my arrival back to Britain. Please forgive me if I make a simple statement through my lawyer. I hope to be able to do better in days to come, when I am on the road to recovery.

"I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares. Before this ordeal, "torture" was an abstract word to me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim.

"It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways — all orchestrated by the United States government.

"While I want to recover, and put it all as far in my past as I can, I also know I have an obligation to the people who still remain in those torture chambers.

"My own despair was greatest when I thought that everyone had abandoned me. I have a duty to make sure that nobody else is forgotten.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2328246/posts?page=16#16

Looks like a bunch of lawyers greeted the terrorist on his arrival in the UK. He’ll get a book deal, lucrative interviews, probably go on a speaking tour...and sue for compensation.

[Rick_Michael]

What’s the official reason for letting him go?

[Diogenesis]

What’s the official reason for letting him go?

[ThunderSleeps]

obama needs terrorists on the loose. That way he can have an “incident” near the 2012 elections, declare martial law, and become ruler for life.