Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Al-Qaida's network in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) has released the audio-recorded wills of two mujahideen operatives who were recently "martyred" in clashes with local security forces -- including former Guantanamo Bay detainee #114 Yusuf Muhammad Mubarak al-Jebairy al-Shehri. The younger brother of a senior Al-Qaida member, al-Shehri first left his home in Saudi Arabia in mid-2001 in order to wage jihad alongside the Taliban because he "thought that participating in jihad with the Taliban was the right thing to do... the Taliban were good Muslims.” In the midst of fleeing the crumbling Taliban frontline in late 2001, Yusuf al-Shehri...

Lawyers for a terrorism suspect once held at Guantánamo Bay who is now facing prosecution in Manhattan asked a judge on Tuesday to dismiss his case on the ground that his nearly five years in detention denied him his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

Hey, remember a few weeks ago, when we were all outraged at the Obama administration’s decision to try Gitmo detainees in New York courts, rather than holding military trials for the self-confessed 9/11 mastermind and his minions? Whatever happened to that? Why has it died out of the news? [must-see video by Bill Whittle]

Earlier this month President Obama fired Greg Craig, his main counsel on matters concerning the Guantanamo Bay Facility. And this week Obama sheds another one of his GITMO team with the resignation of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense for Detainee Policy Phillip Carter. It appears that Obama's GITMO team is being systematically eliminated. One has to ask, why? The only real answer has to be that Obama is setting up some plausible deniability by firing or forcing the resignation of officials involved with GITMO policy. Once enough of these people are gone, Obama can look wide-eyed to the public and...

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R AZ) issued the following statement on the Obama Administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and four other Al-Qaeda terrorists suspected of planning and executing the September 11th attacks in the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York: “I am extremely disappointed with the Obama Administration’s decision to try in U.S. civilian courts the Al-Qaeda terrorists who planned, supported, and conducted the September 11th attacks. These terrorists are not common criminals. They are war criminals, who committed acts of war against our citizens and those of...

There is torture and there is Torture. THIS IS WORSE THAN WATER BOARDING ! Horrible Horrible War Crimes ! The United States forces have been torturing terrorists by making them listen to things like, OMG its hard to say, THE BARNEY THEME SONG !! You know, "I love you, you love me..." They have also been forcing to them to listen to the Meow Mix theme song and some of REM's "Greatest" hits. Oh my how horrible. I can tell you from experience that those songs have been torturing American Parents for YEARS ! To protect their music from being...

Another epic failure? President Obama never had a plan to close Camp Delta, the detainee facility for the worst of the worst terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Like many liberals, he felt it was the right thing to do, made a big deal about the issue during the campaign, and kicked off his term by committing to close the facility in one year. Epic Fail.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent to Ireland and Yemen, the Justice Department said on Saturday, the latest transfers as President Barack Obama tries to close the facility by January. Yemeni Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed was sent to his home country, while two other detainees were sent to Ireland, the U.S. government said, adding it would not identify the two at the request of the government of Ireland. There are still some 223 detainees at the prison. Some are expected to be transferred abroad while others could...

So White House advisor Greg Craig has been stuffed into a broom closet for advising Obama to close Gitmo, a position Obama himself shouted every day from every grassy knoll in the country last year. It was a ridiculous, nakedly political position, divorced from all reality, but the left-wing base just had to be appeased. A fourth grader would have had the sense to ask of and demand an answer from Obama on what he planned to do with the terrorists once he closed Gitmo, but that question apparently didn't occur to anybody with press credentials.

Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it is the ACLU that committed the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied...

OTTAWA — Despite losing a second court battle, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears unwilling to comply with a federal court order demanding his government seek the return of Omar Khadr to Canada. In a 2-1 ruling, the Federal Court of Appeal rejected Harper’s appeal to an earlier decision that demanded his government ask the U.S. to release Khadr from Guantanamo Bay. Describing the ruling as a “split decision� Harper hinted that he would be willing to take up the legal battle to avoid bringing Khadr home further. “The Department of Justice will be examining that decision and obviously I won’t...

WASHINGTON -- Arizona Sen. John McCain joined three other senators Thursday in sending a letter to President Barack Obama, expressing concern over reports the Administration may try the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other alleged war criminals in civilian courts. The senators said they believe that military commissions are the appropriate forum to try suspected terrorists and war criminals. Joining McCain in signing the letter were fellow Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democrats Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Jim Webb of Virginia. Trying Mohammed and others in civil courts "would treat the war on terrorism as...

Senior al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban leaders are reported to have met with Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud to advise him to move his group's operations into Afghanistan and halt attacks against the Pakistani state. Several meetings were said to have been held last week after an 11-man delegation of al Qaeda and Taliban heavy hitters arrived in Waziristan to deliver a request from Mullah Omar, the Amir al Mumineen, or the leader of the faithful in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to a report in The Nation. The Taliban dispatched Sirajuddin Haqqani, the powerful military commander of the Haqqani Network,...

Once in a while, I don’t mind that Obama too much. Sometimes he does stuff that makes me think Bush and Cheney and Rove are still running the place. Look what happened with those Chinese Muslim terrorists. Of all the places he could’ve sent those bad guys, the Teleprompter Kid picked Palau, some rinky-dink island that says it’s a real country. My nephew tells me it’s the place on that TV show where people eat bugs to win a million bucks. Well, the leaders of this island are doing even better, and they don’t even have to put up with...

Poll: Should Guantanamo Bay detainees be tried in U.S. criminal courts?" A Daily PollWhat will President of Iran Ahmadinijad do if he gets a nuclear weapon? A Weekly Poll

Friday, June 05, 2009 Posted By:MAF Blogger DannyPermalinkNew Gallup Poll: Public Opinion Strongly Against Closing Gitmo Move America Forward has been hot on the issue of Guantanamo Bay for the past 6 months. In December we made Guantanamo the last stop on our “Honoring Heroes at the Holidays II” tour and we brought boxes of Christmas cards, DVDs, T-Shirts and lots of other goodies from our care packages to Guantanamo Bay to distribute to troops there. We inspected the detainment camps and returned to the United States to fight Obama and his allies who wanted to close it. We produced...

A Wild West cattle town is desperate to boost its ailing economy by offering its jail as a new home for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay. Senators and congressman from across America have insisted that their states will not accept terrorist suspects in the homeland, but the folk of Hardin, Montana (population: 3,384) are made of sterner stuff. Greg Smith, Hardin's economic development director, volunteered its state-of-the-art prison to the federal government. "This is a dying town," he said. "Businesses here are struggling like there's no tomorrow. But here is a solution that would help us, help the United States...

FOX News' Catherine Herridge is the only American network TV correspondent at Guantanamo Bay for the first session of the "Obama Commissions." The closed door session is the case of Omar Khadr, who was picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002, at the age of 15. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. soldier. During Herridge's trip, she will be staying in what's known as "tent city," a cluster of tents where journalists share sleeping accommodations. Journalists bunk together away from the military, with separate tents for men and women. All photos Herridge and her photographer Geoff Doyle...

May 15, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: United States Transfers Lakhdar Boumediene to France Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian national who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since 2002, has been transferred to France. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009, Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of Boumediene’s case. As a result of that review, Boumediene was approved for transfer to France, which was carried out today pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and France. Boumediene was involved in the Supreme Court case, Boumediene v....

President Barack Obama has given permission for military trials to restart at Guantanamo Bay in an announcement that effectively repudiated one of his first decisions in office. The White House attempted to forestall criticism from President Obama's liberal supporters by promising improved legal safeguards. President Obama stopped military commissions, which were trying suspects in the September 11, 2001 attacks on America by al-Qaeda as soon as he took over from George W Bush. President Obama ordered a review of the procedures, declaring the system did not work. But he was careful not to rule out the use of a modified...

WASHINGTON (AP) - South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says he doesn't think Congress should pay to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay until there is a more detailed plan for what to do with detainees there. A Senate panel on Thursday considered a war spending bill that would provide $50 million to the Pentagon to begin the promised closure of the facility. Graham said he would like to see a new system in place before that money is spent, including a national security court to review each detainee's status. More certainty about the detainees will make moving the...

Culpeper’s Congressman Eric Cantor, Chief Minority Whip in the U.S. House, will join other Republicans today in D.C. in decrying the potential for relocating Guantanamo Bay detainees to prisons in the United States. President Barack Obama, on his second day in office, signed an executive order ordering the terrorist detention center in Cuba closed within a year. The White House has not announced where the 250 prisoners will be transferred. But a couple weeks after Obama made the decision to close Guantanamo, Cantor issued a statement objecting to possible “ramifications” of the announcement. “Do Not Move Known Terrorists to Virginia,”...

(snip) SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, first of all, Neil, they should not be eligible for any benefits. That would be crazy. But the major point here is that President Obama, with great fanfare, announced the closure of Guantanamo Bay, the prison at Gitmo, as we know it, and then, nothing. In other words, they did what, you know, that everybody would like to see done at least around the world, et cetera, but then no addressing of the fundamental issues associated with it. What do you do with the detainees? What sort of system of trials do you...

Preventive detention will continue to have a place in the war on terror. BY LINDSEY GRAHAM and JOHN MCCAIN When President Barack Obama declassified and released legal memoranda from the Department of Justice, he opened the door to a drawn-out battle over the Bush administration's use of coercive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists. We believe that any subsequent attempts to subject those who provided such legal advice to prosecutions are a mistake. They will have a chilling effect on the candor with which future government officials provide their best counsel. The country must move on from debates about the past,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday reiterated the desire of Senate Democrats to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, dismissing any funding conflict with the House. Reid (D-Nev.) downplayed the significance of Monday’s decision by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) against including $80 million in a $94 billion supplemental spending bill to close the prison in Cuba. . . . . . But Reid distinguished the funding conflict from any disagreement over whether to close the prison, reminding reporters that 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain (R-Ariz.) has also expressed a desire to close the facility....

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090429.html Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers Remarks in Berlin on the Closing of Guantanamo Bay Berlin, Germany Wednesday, April 29, 2009 It is my distinct honor to join you at the Hans Arnhold Center of the American Academy of Berlin. The Academy is a fitting caretaker for a building that holds a special place in history as a safe harbor for freedom and a catalyst for cultural exchange. When luminaries like Richard Holbrooke, Richard Von Weizsacker, Fritz Stern and Otto Graf Lambsdorff joined forces to create the American Academy, they knew that we...

One of the greatest threats to the security of the United States is not from a military, but from a psychology of denial. It is the Sept. 10 mentality that minimizes the threat posed by jihadist terrorism and rejects the idea we are even at war at all. According to this thinking, suicide bombers, their leaders and financiers are nothing more than street-corner criminals; a problem for our criminal justice system, not our armed forces. A quick look at terrorism in the 1990s exposes the inadequacy of the Sept. 10 mindset. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. In...

We have plenty of basis and evidence that [Binyam] Mohammed is dangerous. But Holder’s sense of “responsibility ... as attorney general ... for the safety of this nation” did not stop him from agreeing to Mohammed’s release and transfer to England — where he now plots freely while on the British dole. Naturally, having discerned that all the tough talk was just that, talk, British authorities are back on the administration’s doorstep, demanding the release of Shaker Aamer. He’s a bin Laden confidant who trained aspiring terrorists at al-Qaeda camps, met with shoe-bomber Richard Reid, and traveled widely in the...

A glowing report by the reigning Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela speaking of her trip to Guantanamo Bay has disappeared from her blog, only to be replaced by a censorious and political correct note from the President of the Miss Universe organization. Dayana Mendoza's now-deleted late-March posting sounded like a note home from a spring breaker. "We hung out with the guys from the East Coast and they showed us the boat inside and out, how they work and what they do, we took a ride around the land and it was a loooot of fun!" Mendoza wrote. "The...

No one wants a Gitmo detainee for a neighbor and for good reason. In January, I wrote about the problems that the terrorists would present if they sat in American prisons: What do you do with murderous and suicidal terrorists intent on killing prison guards or killing themselves? What do you do with a bunch of crazies who wish to spread a virulent ideology to any discontent who will listen? What do you do with dangerous people possessing dangerous secrets where the secrets, if leaked in a court battle, would endanger those in the court, the local populace, and the...

President Barack Obama has announced that many of those held at the Guantánamo Bay facility will no longer be known as "enemy combatants". No word yet on what they will be called instead: "not entirely friendly imprisoned individuals" perhaps? ... Let's pray that there is not another attack on British or American civilian targets (it is bad enough that fundamentalist lunatics target our troops as they try to give the Afghans a chance to reconstruct their country). But if there is such an attack here or in the United States, and it subsequently emerges that one of the ring-leaders had...

WASHINGTON — South Carolina politicians are moving to try to block any transfer of suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo detention center ordered closed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Navy brig at Charleston, S.C. On Thursday, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., became a sponsor of a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for such a transfer, while in Columbia, S.C., the South Carolina House of Representatives passed a measure asking President Obama and Congress not to move Guantanamo detainees to the state. "Guantanamo Bay is home to the most hardened and battle-tested terrorists in the world," DeMint...

Attorney General Eric Holder, just back from his first trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Wednesday he is still determined to carry out President Barack Obama's order to close the prison, but admitted he was "impressed by the people," and said "the facilities are good ones." Attorney General Eric Holder said he didn't witness any prisoner mistreatment during his trip. Holder's positive assessment of "professionalism" at the prison was in distinct contrast to claims by many critics who charge Guantanamo Bay stands as a world-wide symbol of the alleged U.S. mistreatment of enemy combatants. "I did not witness any mistreatment...

"That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists because living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture." --President Obama 2/24/2009 How can this be? I thought the conditions at Gitmo were okay! Obama's own comission said so! I thought we were all supposed to accept the Messiah's word as Gospel, right?...

The sets a very, very dangerous precedent. 11% of released or rehabilitated terrorists return to a life of murdering innocents. And I'm sorry to break it to the bleeding-heart human rights activists, but these people do not have any constitutional rights and should be prosecuted to the fullest! The Associated Press reports: PARIS (AP) — A Paris appeals court on Tuesday overturned the terrorism convictions of five former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, ruling French police agents were out of line in questioning them at the U.S. prison camp. France is among the few Western countries to prosecute nationals who have...

Gitmo detainees treated humanely, U.S. report says Story Highlights Defense Department advises that violent detainees be allowed to pray, have rec time Attorney general announces task force on what to do with detainees at Gitmo DoD point man on counterterrorism will head task force, advise senior review board From Barbara StarrCNN Pentagon Correspondent WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new Defense Department report concludes that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, treats detainees humanely, according to a department official with knowledge of the report. Attorney General Eric Holder, shown earlier this week, has formed a detainee review task force. 1...

February 20, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/February/09-ag-148.html Attorney General Appoints Executive Director to Lead New Task Force on Review of Guantanamo Bay Detainees WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder today announced the appointment of an Executive Director to lead a new interagency task force charged with continued implementation of the President’s Jan. 22 Executive Order calling for an immediate review of the status of individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The Executive Director, Matthew G. Olsen, will lead the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force, which is responsible for assembling and examining relevant information and...

Friday, February 20, 2009 Posted By:Catherine MoyPermalinkObama’s Government Report: Guantanamo is Humane and Abides by Geneva Conventions President Obama in one of his first actions in office ordered the closure of the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also ordered an in-depth study of the prison camps to decipher whether the terrorists and alleged terrorists at Gitmo are properly treated and that U.S. troops are abiding by the Geneva Conventions. The report, part of which was leaked today, shows that Gitmo “complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva conventions” and that the prisoners are treated with dignity. A Pentagon...

AG Holder headed to Guantanamo Bay to see facility 5 hours agoWASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder is headed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, next week to examine the detention facility.President Barack Obama has given Holder the job of leading the administration's effort to shut down the site within a year.Holder has told reporters he will travel on Monday to the military base to see things firsthand. He said he wants to talk to officials there about detention and interrogation techniques.

If you had any doubts about how warped the Far-Left is in their attitudes about America, just listen (I know it's hard) to this interview done by Rachel Maddow with a former U.S. Soldier who served as a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay. Maddow spends a full two minutes building up this interview as a tell-all by the former guard about all the abuse that took place at Guantanamo Bay. But when she actually interviews him, the alleged "abuse" he cites are as follows: 1. When some of the first terrorist detainees arrived there, this guard took one older man...

Sen. Jim Inhofe joins group fighting to keep prisoners in Cuba BY CHRIS CASTEEL Published: February 11, 2009 Inhofe, R-Tulsa, praised the group, Move America Forward, and said he is pushing legislation that would prevent any of the prisoners from being moved to prisons in the United States. Inhofe, who recently returned from a visit to the prison in Cuba, said the detainees are treated well and that the prison is serving a valuable purpose. Asked whether the prisoners should remain at the prison indefinitely, Inhofe said, "I wish there were more choices. There really aren’t. I guess we could...

No. The base at Guantanamo Bay will stay open for now. It is the detention center that will temporarily close. Guantanamo Bay was used as a detention center during President Bush #1's term. He used it to hold Haitian political activists who'd fled their homeland after a military coup in 1991. The base at Guantanamo Bay can be turned back into a detention center any time a President wants to. President Obama ordered the detention centers closed by executive order. He can change that at any time. He has left the door open for secret CIA detention camps. Where will...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) made the following statement after he joined U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and others in sponsoring the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Safe Closure Act. The bill would prohibit the use of any federal funds to transfer detainees currently being held prisoner at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to any facility in the United States. In addition, the bill would prohibit any funds to modify or construct any facility in the United States to house enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay. “Guantanamo Bay is home to the most hardened and...

THE United States should hand Guantanamo back to Cuba, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says. US President Barack Obama "has to give the territory of Guantanamo to the Cubans," Chavez said yesterday as he attended the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo echoed the sentiment, saying: "Guantanamo is Cuban. It should go back to its roots." Obama has said he wants to close the United States' notorious military prison in Guantanamo within a year, and has reached out to countries around the world to take into detention the suspected Islamic extremists being held there. The United States,...

A military judge has refused the Obama administration's request to delay proceeding for 120 days in the case of a detainee held at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is accused of planning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship, an al-Qaeda strike that killed 17 service members and injured 50 others. The decision throws into some disarray the administration's plan to buy some time as it reviews individual detainee cases as part of its plan to close the prison. The Pentagon may now be forced to withdraw the charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a...

Directly from the front page of Fox News.com ...Another graduate from Guantanamo Bay makes good with the home boys.This time, twelve others were afforded the opportunity to take an express train to the afterlife with this murderous piece of excrement.From Fox News: As President Obama pushes for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, the debate over where to house the terror detainees being held there is heating up.An exclusive video of a former Gitmo detainee's martyrdom tape, obtained by FOX News, is a reminder of the concerns that terror suspects — who have been held but released from Guantanamo Bay...

January 26, 2009 Why we are helpless dealing with enemies on our own soil From the Cold War to the current Islamofascist threat--do we ever learn? By Wes Vernon "With a stroke of the pen, he [President Obama] effectively declared an end to the 'war on terror,' as President George W. Bush had defined it." So reads a front-page story in Friday's Washington Post. Stop right there. That is a snapshot of the wishful rose-colored-glasses mentality that opinion leaders in academia, media, big-money foundations, entertainment, etc., have foisted on Americans (with varying degrees of success) for decades. It lasted throughout...

SAUDI authorities have rearrested nine Islamist militants, including former inmates of the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the interior ministry said. The ministry yesterday said the nine Saudi nationals had undergone a rehabilitation program for Islamist militants arrested in the kingdom and for returnees from the notorious US prison. "Since the start of the rehabilitation program, nine people, who had taken part in the program, have been rearrested," a ministry official told state news agency SPA. "Some of them had returned from Guantanamo," the official said. The comments come in the wake of reports that two...

One of the first things Barack Hussein Obama did upon acquiring his new office was to set the wheels in motion for the closing of Guantanamo Bay. While Team Obama tries to explain how granting constitutional rights to terrorists isn't a national security threat, Gitmo grads are garnering attention and seizing power within radical cells pretty much wherever they land.

This is utterly burlesque.No propaganda. No partisan smoke screens. Just cold hard reality.The President of the United States is not sure what will be happening with the detainees who currently reside at the detention center in Guanatanamo Bay once it closes next year.He said so.He just doesn't know.There is no plan.He'll figure it out.Pinch me, Mabel, I'm dreaming, right?He knows enough to be able to say with certitude that the closing of Gitmo is the right thing to do - just as he knew that "a woman's right to choose" an abortion was the correct position to take, despite not...