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Nearly six years ago, President George W. Bush declared Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him swept out of federal court and into a U.S. Navy brig so he could be interrogated without the legal protections afforded by the criminal justice system. Bush said the Qatari national, arrested as a material witness in Illinois in December 2001, possessed critical intelligence that "would aid U.S. efforts to prevent attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States." In an agreement Marri entered Thursday in Peoria, Ill., he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda and admitted to...

BERLIN (Reuters) – The United States has made a formal request to Germany to take in some prisoners held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman for Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday. Confirming a report to appear in Monday's Der Spiegel news magazine, the spokesman said the ministry is currently reviewing the request. He declined to provide further details. Der Spiegel said the United States has asked Germany to take about 10 prisoners who cannot be sent to their home countries and who are classified as not posing a security threat. Schaeuble, a leader in Chancellor...

President Bush has said on more than one occasion that his legacy can't be judged now and I agree, the battles are still too clear in our memory and the animosity still too fresh to make any type of assessment. I believe he was right in the respect of his handling of the war against international terrorism. It will be noted as a turning point and a model way of dealing with terrorists that don't represent a nation-state when viewed from a different paradigm a decade out. Here's further proof of what I'm talking about as Obama is rekindling a...

The New York Times has this interesting story. The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself. Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

In one of his first acts as president, in an example of putting the cart way, way out in front of the horse, Barack Obama issued an order closing the detention facility used to house suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What neither the order then nor the administration now have resolved is the problem of what to do with the detainees once the Gitmo facility is closed. One alternative, which has been much in the news, has been to transfer them to facilities inside the United States, where they can either be tried or released into the general population....

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself. Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects. Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies...

The Uighers are a group of Chinese separatists that often resort to violency in their goal of breaking their own traditional ethnicity and freeing it from the rest of China. In GITMO, there are a group of seventeen Uighers. Last year, the Pentagon decided to change their status from "enemy combatant". The reasoning behind this was that the Uighers beef was with China not the U.S. The reasoning was rather dubious. These particular Uighers were picked up in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of them were picked up on the battlefield fighting American forces. Furthermore, these Uighers were known to...

Most people know Andrew McCarthy as a prolific commentator, author and all around expert on the subject of the world-wide terrorist threat, excuse me, the world-wide threat of man-made disasters. Mr. McCarthy became an expert as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York. It was McCarthy who led the prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others for the 1993 World Trade Center. After 9/11 the supervised the Justice Department’s Command Post near Ground Zero in New York City. So it was no surprise that the Justice department invited Mr. McCarthy to participate in their May...

Federal authorities began what will be hotly contested discussions this week on where in the U.S. to send Guantanamo detainees who cannot be tried or transferred to another country, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday. Gates told senators that he realizes that virtually every member of Congress will file legislation prohibiting the U.S. from sending the detainees to a facility in their own state. He said the Justice Department is still trying to determine how many of the 241 detainees at the military prison in Cuba will not be taken by other countries or put on trial, and there is...

A US federal appeals court, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security have all come out against the release of the Chinese Muslim Gitmo detainees due to obvious security concerns. But that does not matter to President Obama as he is more concerned with bringing our enemies here, than he is with protecting us.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Two Sudanese detainees facing military trials in Guantanamo Bay are "good candidates for repatriation," a U.S. military lawyer who represents one of them said in Khartoum Thursday. A team of U.S. lawyers representing the detainees has been in Sudan since last week meeting the families of the remaining prisoners and former inmates ahead of an expected decision by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration on the fate of pending cases in military trials in Guantanamo. Since taking office in January, Obama has ordered the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba. He has...

Moving quickly to release Chinese Uighur terrorists into the United States, Obama administration officials have -- for the second time -- overridden objections of federal agencies responsible for national security. The first time -- as I reported on April 20 -- the White House overrode the inter-agency panel it created from all the national security agencies to review all the cases of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. That panel found that the seventeen Uighurs -- members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement captured at an al-Queda training camp in Pakistan -- were too dangerous to release in the United States.

BERLIN (AP) — The United States and its allies must make sacrifices to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday in a high-profile appeal for Europe's help. Holder spoke to the American Academy in Berlin, not long after telling reporters that the United States had approved the release of about 30 Guantanamo detainees. "We must all make sacrifices and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices," said Holder. "The United States is ready to do its part, and we hope that Europe will join us — not out of a sense of...

BERLIN (AP) — The United States and its allies must make sacrifices to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday in a high-profile appeal for Europe's help. Holder spoke to the American Academy in Berlin, not long after telling reporters that the United States had approved the release of about 30 Guantanamo detainees. "We must all make sacrifices and we must all be willing to make unpopular choices," said Holder. "The United States is ready to do its part, and we hope that Europe will join us — not out of a sense of...

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...

Attorney General Eric Holder, aka "the right man at the right time to protect our citizens in the critical years ahead," is in Germany discussing what he doesn't seem to want to talk about much in the United States: the Obama administration's emerging plan to comply with the president's arbitrary January 2010 deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay by throwing open the door and releasing trained jihadists into the United States (among other places). Fox News is reporting that, in addition to the Uighurs, another 13 combatants have now been "cleared" for release — bringing the total to 30. And when...

Rumsfeld Rejected Waterboarding Pelosi Did Not http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/29/top_stories/doc49f821cd5d0ae182977392.txt

Republican lawmakers are calling on the Obama administration to produce a plan for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center as Attorney General Eric Holder struggles to find new homes in Europe for the prison's detainees. Guantanamo currently houses 240 detainees, about 60 identified by the Bush administration as being unable to be returned to their countries of origin because of fears they will be tortured or executed there.

Thursday, Debra Burlingame and Hamilton Peterson appeared on The Factor with Bill O'Reilly to discuss the release of OLC memos. (See disclaimer at the end of this post.) Some portion of Islam is conducting a war upon both Islam and America. Torturing Muslims, raping Muslims, baking Muslim children in ovens, strapping bombs to mentally handicapped Muslims and setting them off among Muslims, cutting off Muslims' heads, and hanging and shooting Muslims as "spies" in soccer stadiums is al Qaeda's foreign policy, not American foreign policy. The only genocidal war being conducted is the one al Qaeda is waging. They seek...

White House wants panel to change opinion about lethality of some terrorists they want released. http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/28/top_stories/doc49f6bd41268ca954534464.txt