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Guantanamo and the question of terrorist recruitment
Examiner ^ | 5/24/09 | Byron York

Posted on 05/24/2009 8:39:16 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun

In the next few days, you're going to see an increasingly intense debate on the question of whether the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is a major factor in terrorist recruitment. In that debate, you're going to hear a name you might not have heard, Matthew Alexander. And you're going to learn that what you've been told about Guantanamo and terrorist recruitment is not the whole story.

In his speech on Thursday, President Obama gave two reasons for his decision to shut down Guantanamo. The first was that it has lowered American standing in the world, and the second was that it is a recruitment tool for terrorists. "Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al-Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause," the president said. "Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained." While Obama certainly views America's standing in the world as important, it is the charge that Guantanamo is a terrorist recruitment tool that is the real foundation of the decision to shut the detention center down. Absent that allegation, it is unlikely that Guantanamo would be slated for closing.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gitmo; globaljihad; guantanamo; interrogation; jihad; terrorists
Byron is screaming a warning here.
1 posted on 05/24/2009 8:39:16 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
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To: anniegetyourgun

Our rotten corrupt amoral western culture reflected in Las Vegas and Hollywood has also led to jihad recruitment.

Will obama also shut them down?


2 posted on 05/24/2009 8:42:02 PM PDT by silverleaf ("Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal ( Martin Luther King))
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To: anniegetyourgun

The jihadis are allegedly more upset over incidents of Koran defilement than they are over water boarding. Go figure.


3 posted on 05/24/2009 8:43:56 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: anniegetyourgun

So how did they recruit the 9/11 hijackers, 1993 WTC bombers, etc etc etc?

There was no Gitmo to drive them mad back then . . .


4 posted on 05/24/2009 8:47:53 PM PDT by jazminerose
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To: anniegetyourgun

I’d like Alexander to give a convincing explanation as to why he believes that people are stating their true motives and not some BS that they were instructed to say.

He sounds like a patsy to me.


5 posted on 05/24/2009 8:49:22 PM PDT by freespirited (Is this a nation of laws or a nation of Democrats? -- Charles Krauthammer)
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To: anniegetyourgun
So, we have to close Guantanamo because the media used every weapon in their arsenal to bring down the Bush presidency? We have to do so because the MSM lied?

No doubt the MSM gets tingles up its legs just thinking about its ability to abuse its power this way.

6 posted on 05/24/2009 8:50:34 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: anniegetyourgun
On the other hand, Osama bin Laden his own self points to America's weak response to the deaths of 18 American servicemen in Somalia as a recruiting coup.

CNN.com

Bin Laden cited the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan and the United States' failed 1993 mission in Somalia as examples to suggest a U.S. defeat in Afghanistan was within reach.

"We believe that the defeat of America is possible, with the help of God, and is even easier for us -- God permitting -- than the defeat of the Soviet Union was before."

In Somalia, U.S. forces pulled out after 18 U.S. special operations personnel were killed during a raid against a warlord faction in the capital Mogadishu.

"Our brothers with Somali mujahedeen and God's power fought the Americans. God granted them victory. America exited dragging its tails in failure, defeat, and ruin," bin Laden said.

The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan and the dispersal of his hardcore al Qaeda loyalists.

7 posted on 05/24/2009 8:52:33 PM PDT by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all. -- Texas Eagle)
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To: anniegetyourgun

What probably drives them nuts is that their Holy Book tells them hat Allah has made them masters of this world, but a cursory look around tells them otherwise.


8 posted on 05/24/2009 8:53:53 PM PDT by jmcenanly
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To: anniegetyourgun

These taqqiyah artists are enjoying this. Remember the scene in “Die Hard” where Hans Gruber thinks a few seconds and makes up a name of a terror cell he wants released from prison as one of his kidnap “demands”? “Asian Dawn”; then the press ran with it, the cops completely bought into it; meanwhile, all Gruber and his boys wanted was a vault full of bearer-bonds.

The al-qaeda boys are fighting us because we’re there, and because of our support for Israel. Any other answer they give is a canard, and, like in “Die Hard”, the press and the idiots in high places swallow it whole.


9 posted on 05/24/2009 8:56:55 PM PDT by Migraine (Diversity is great... ...until it happens to YOU.)
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To: anniegetyourgun
Absent that allegation, it is unlikely that Guantanamo would be slated for closing...nonsense - Obama wants to close Gitmo because it is a prized bugbear of his fanatical leftwing supporters, and he's about paying them off for their votes in the election in the same way he's paying off all his other supporters like the unions, ACORN and the rest - if Gitmo's such an outrage, what does he suppose will keep the next place to which the terrorists there now are sent from becoming just as effective a recruiting symbol - by his bizarre logic the only way to avoid further recruitment is to turn all our prisoners loose, preferably with a nice bon voyage party for each to show potential recruits how much we really like them.......
10 posted on 05/24/2009 9:01:04 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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To: anniegetyourgun
Jihadis are recruited because of America's weaknesses, not because of America's strengths.
11 posted on 05/24/2009 9:01:52 PM PDT by Prokopton
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To: All

OPINION:

The hard fact is that anything can be used as a recruitment tool for the global jihad.

If it isn’t gitmo, it’s the cartoon jihad, fitna, soccer ball jihad, Various books jihad, rushdie jihad, toilet bowl jihad, immigrants aren’t understood jihad, abu gharib, pork in the food jihad, etc, etc, until the end of time...the global jihad.


12 posted on 05/24/2009 9:12:05 PM PDT by Cindy
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To: anniegetyourgun

...so how did the terrorists recruit people before the opening of Guantanamo?


13 posted on 05/24/2009 9:13:00 PM PDT by Tzimisce (http://groups.myspace.com/nailthemessiah)
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To: anniegetyourgun

Recruiting tool? Best way to make any suspected AlQ dumbass start crapping in his dishdasha was to tell him he was going to Gitmo. How is that a recruitment tool?


14 posted on 05/24/2009 9:13:53 PM PDT by OCCASparky (Steely-Eyed Killer of the Deep)
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To: OCCASparky
start crapping in his dishdasha

Hahaha!

15 posted on 05/24/2009 9:20:53 PM PDT by Dinah Lord (fighting the Islamofascist Jihad - one keystroke at a time...)
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To: jazminerose
"So how did they recruit the 9/11 hijackers, 1993 WTC bombers, etc etc etc? There was no Gitmo to drive them mad back then . . ."

Exactly! Thank you for that.

It is just so disgusting to sit and listen to Obama or any other commie lib Democrat recite the liberal talking point, that the containment of terrorists in Cuba, is driving terrorist recruitment around the world. That's like saying that containing criminals in prison only fuels more people to commit crimes.

It takes a "special" kind of idiot to stand up and say such nonsense, because there simply isn't any logic in such a foolish assertion.

16 posted on 05/24/2009 11:40:41 PM PDT by Hillarys nightmare (So Proud to be living in "Jesus Land" ! Don't you wish everyone did?)
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