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In fact, captured terrorists went out of style a long time ago, so that’s not the actual change. Until recently — like, say, two weeks ago — the Department of Defense used the term unlawful combatant as the label for terrorists captured by American military and intelligence forces as a way to distinguish them from uniformed soldiers of a recognized state authority in a straight-up fight. Their new manual dispenses with that term, the Federation of American Scientists noticed today (via Steven Aftergood and Olivier Knox): When it comes to Department of Defense doctrine on military treatment of detained persons,...

Lawfare Blog: Following an American special forces raid on the compound of Islamic State operative Abu Sayyaf, U.S. interrogators, who are part of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, have flown to Iraq in order to question Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, who was taken during the operation. Umm Sayyaf was allegedly involved in the workings of the Islamic State and could possibly have played a role in “the enslavement of women in Iraq and Syria.” U.S. interrogators plan to talk to Umm Sayyaf about U.S. hostages held by the militant group. However, according to the Washington Post,...

Betrayal: Another Obama amnesty program is well underway — at Guantanamo, where three dangerous al-Qaida operatives have quietly been OK´d for release in three months. And now a close aide to the 9/11 mastermind is also on tap for release. After already freeing an al-Qaida bomb maker last month — over the objections of U.S. intelligence, which warned, "He would be capable of re-engaging as an explosives expert or trainer" — the parole board that Obama set up to clear out Gitmo is now poised to rubber-stamp for release a close associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Gitmo´s so-called Periodic Review

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. must release photographs showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has ruled in a long-running clash over letting the world see potentially disturbing images of how the military treated prisoners. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein's ruling Friday gives the government, which has fought the case for over a decade, two months to decide whether to appeal before the photos could be released. The American Civil Liberties Union has been seeking to make them public in the name of holding government accountable.

On Tuesday, Barack Obama adamantly defended his policy of emptying the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, demanding that Congress get on board with it as well. As Jim Hoft noted at the time, the military leadership present at the State of the Union address didn’t appear too enthusiastic about it:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Perhaps the New York Times has an explanation for that stone-faced reaction. At the same time that Obama bragged about “turning the page” on war and the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, one of the men transferred from Gitmo worked to establish a...

Obviously as a reward for committing theft of classified documents for the democrats, Barack Obama has named Alissa Starzak to the legal department at the Pentagon. It’s a position she has never achieved on her own and is a large promotion over her previous jobs. But why put someone with a history of stealing classified secrets to a job where she could steal the country’s most guarded secrets? It’s a reward. Republicans in both houses of congress have accused her of making copies of documents and carrying them out of the Pentagon for use by Diane Feinstein and her committee...

The Obama administration's nominee for a senior legal position at the Pentagon is one of the congressional staffers accused by Republicans and intelligence officials of stealing classified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, Fox News has learned -- and the controversy could imperil her shot at a major career promotion. Sources on Capitol Hill and in the intelligence community say Alissa Starzak, a majority staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) who has been nominated for the position of general counsel to the U.S. Army, is one of two SSCI employees accused by the panel's Republicans, and by...

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

The army of Allah received some reinforcements last night, as President Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo Bay terrorist detention center moved forward. Five Yemeni “detainees” captured in Pakistan were released, leaving 122 left in the Cuba camp. Four will go to Oman, and one will shiver in Estonia until the spring comes. Both nations are welcoming their first Gitmo alumni. Felicia Schwartz of the WSJ reports: "The Pentagon said detainee Akhmed Abdul Qadir was transferred to Estonia, while four others were transferred to Oman. They included Al Khadr Abdallah Muhammad Al Yafi, Fadel Hussein Saleh Hentif, Abd al-Rahman Abdullah...

MIAMI (AP) — Five men who were held for a dozen years without charge at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan for resettlement, the U.S. government announced. The two men from Tunisia and three from Yemen had been cleared for release from the prison by a government task force but could not be sent to their homelands. The U.S. has sent hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo to third countries but this is the first time Kazakhstan has accepted any for resettlement.

U.S. president Barack Obama said in a TV interview set for broadcast on Sunday that he will do "everything I can" to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after four Afghan detainees held there were sent home. Obama promised to shut the internationally condemned prison when he took office nearly six years ago, saying it was damaging America's image around the world. But he has been unable to do so, partly because of obstacles posed by the U.S. Congress. "It is something that continues to inspire jihadists and extremists around the world, the fact that these folks...

President Obama has opened a new front in his hard line against the incoming Republican Congress by releasing more detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against lawmakers' objections. The Pentagon announced Thursday that four al Qaeda fighters from Yemen, including a senior figure who facilitated travel to Afghanistan for Arab extremists, and a Tunisian extremist would be transferred to Slovakia and Georgia. The transfers leave 143 detainees at Guantanamo, which Obama has vowed to close. Republican lawmakers, who have been pressing the administration to stop releasing detainees amid reports that some former prisoners had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and...

The British accent in the video that depicted the despicable and cowardly murder of an American journalist has raised concerns in the UK about the background of the ISIS jihadist. The Washington Post’s report on the butchery includes this nugget that should have Americans thinking twice, too: In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond acknowledged that the apparent executioner spoke with a British accent and said the video seemed to be genuine.Hundreds of Britons are believed to have traveled to Syria to fight in the country’s civil war, including many who have joined the Islamic State.“We’re...

The Obama administration has quietly repatriated a dozen detainees from a small U.S. military prison in Afghanistan, moving a modest step closer toward winding down the United States' controversial post-9/11 detainee system. President Barack Obama, in a letter to Congress released on Thursday, informed U.S. lawmakers that about 38 non-Afghan prisoners remained at the Parwan detention center outside of Kabul, down from around 50 a few months ago. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a Frenchman, a Kuwaiti and 10 Pakistani prisoners were sent back to their respective home countries at the end of May....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration has quietly repatriated a dozen detainees from a small U.S. military prison in Afghanistan, moving a modest step closer toward winding down the United States' controversial post-9/11 detainee system. President Barack Obama, in a letter to Congress released on Thursday, informed U.S. lawmakers that about 38 non-Afghan prisoners remained at the Parwan detention center outside of Kabul, down from around 50 a few months ago.

(CNSNews.com) – In a Jan. 13, 2012 letter to leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees on, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised that Congress would be consulted and all legal requirements would be met before any prisoners were transferred from the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The 2012 Defense Authorization Act--and subsequent Defense Authorization acts--required that the administration notify Congress 30 days before releasing or transferring any prisoner from Guantanamo. “I want also to make clear that any transfer from Guantanamo will be undertaken after consultation with Congress and pursuant to all legal requirements for transfers, including those spelled...

... There was one constant for Obama throughout this process, and it wasn’t Bowe Bergdahl’s freedom. It was the freedom of five of the most deadly Taliban terrorists. Obama couldn’t solve a problem like Guantanamo without first dealing with its most notorious and dangerous residents. The president couldn’t just free the terrorists, though; he needed a sympathetic reason. Enter Bowe Bergdahl. The White House couldn’t just come out and say Bergdahl was a deserter, otherwise people might focus on the true cost of the deal rather than its stated benefit. Obama couldn’t just inform Congress and set a precedent for...

SHEYKHAN, Afghanistan—Taliban forces led by Mohammed Fazl swept through this village on the Shomali plain north of Kabul in 1999 in a scorched-earth offensive that prompted some 300,000 people to flee for their lives.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says Obama may be impeached if the Obama administration “flows prisoners out of Gitmo.” So what happens when Obama flows them straight into Graham’s own state, like the brig at Joint Base Charleston? What will Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) do when Gitmo detainees show up at the brig at Camp Pendleton? President Obama defended the release of five top Taliban terrorists by saying that’s what happens when “wars end.” Never before have we had a president so detached from the realities of the world as we do now, at this moment. The war in Afghanistan is...