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WASHINGTON – U.S. authorities have brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to the United States, flying him into New York to face trial for bombing U.S. embassies, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

US President Barack Obama had been hoping that Germany would take nine Guantanamo detainees deemed ready for release. But Berlin has presented a list of conditions -- which likely can't be met. During his brief visit to Germany last week, US President Barack Obama told the gathered press in Dresden that, when it came to the possibility of Germany accepting some of the Guantanamo prisoners due to be released, concrete demands were not yet on the table. "We have not asked (Chancellor Angela Merkel) for hard commitments, and she has not given us any hard commitments beyond having a serious...

Barack Obama campaigned on the over-broad theme of “hope” and “change,” and one of the changes was to close the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where currently some 240 enemy combatants are housed. Obama had no idea at the time what closing the facility meant, a characteristic common to so many of his campaign ideas. This is a result of his lack of experience in virtually any meaningful endeavor that would prepare someone to serve his country as its president. Fortunately for Mr. Obama, and unfortunately for the nation, far too many people don’t seem to notice his...

TERRORISTS FREE TO KILL ONCE AGAIN AS THEY SLIP THE GRASP OF GITMO'S KID GLOVES. The Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terrorist activities after claiming they weren't terrorists. Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure. These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis? Why wasn't more intelligence gathered to predict they'd rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban? In a word, politics. Gitmo interrogations have been emasculated to placate critics of waterboarding and other "torture," say two senior...

The NY Times covers a trial balloon that would provoke outrage from the left if Bush-Cheney had proposed it. However, as the Times tells it, the proposal has no sponsorship at all - apparently it just fell from the sky, or something. Here we go: The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It...

The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention. The proposal would ease what has come...

On January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama issued his first executive order: He was closing the detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and calling a halt to the military commissions created in late 2001 to try terrorist suspects detained there. Like the startling opening chord of a Beethoven symphony, Obama’s action was intended to herald a new tone in America’s “war on terror” and a restoration of America’s moral standing. Then several strange things happened. Obama’s order “closing” Gitmo actually left it open for a year, ostensibly until new arrangements could be made for the 240...

GENEVA — Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be in trouble soon for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday. "In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties," Leandro Despouy, who is special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz said on Wednesday he would support having Guantanamo Bay detainees housed at Rochester's Federal Medical Center as long as sufficient safeguards are met. "If all the procedures are in place as they have done with everyone else, if we're very clear on what the legal avenues are that these people have, I think our professionals there can handle it," said the First District Congressman from Mankato. But his view contrasts with Minnesota's only U.S. senator, who, like Walz, is a Democrat. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she is opposed to having any Guantanamo Bay detainees housed in...

The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom. The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not...

In his Cairo speech, President Obama went out of his way to say the U.S. had disavowed torture, however defined, of those who fly planes into buildings and otherwise plan mass murder.He reminded the Arab street that the Supermax facility at Guantanamo housing these murderers, past and future, will be closed.What will happen to these Gitmo residents is still unclear. Not a single member of Congress wants them housed in his or her district, and few countries seem willing to take many off our hands.

Canada has turned down a request from the U.S. government to take in a number of Chinese Muslims currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and deemed by Washington to be members of a terrorist group. Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, acknowledged Thursday that they received an inquiry from the Obama administration about taking in some detainees. "The government had a previous request from the Bush administration and in both cases the government's position is that we’re not interested in taking detainees from Guantanamo Bay," Teneycke said. "In the case of other detainees who...

Pollster John Zogby regularly updates our Obamameter. Each week, Zogby uses his polling, expert analysis, and interaction with major players to come up with a rating of between 1 and 100. Unlike his polls, the Obamameter is his judgment on the performance of the president once multiple factors are considered. In this week's Obamameter, Zogby says that the president was slowed by former Vice President Dick Cheney's rap on Guantánamo Bay policies and the right's concerns about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Also, he's facing troubles winning over independents. "It was just a fair to middling week for Obama. Cheney...

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...

26 minutes ago OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada has turned down US requests to take in Guantanamo detainees, becoming the third US ally to put a snag in efforts to shutter the infamous "war on terror" prison, an official said Friday. The United States asked Ottawa last month to take in three of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees held at the US naval base in southern Cuba, Canadian immigration ministry spokesman Alykhan Velshi told AFP. Ottawa had also received a similar request from the former George W. Bush administration to resettle the ethnic Uighurs, he said. And it was pressed publicly by...

PETROS, Tenn. - A Morgan County commissioner has drafted a proposal urging the state to consider moving terrorism suspects from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to a recently closed state prison. The last inmates were taken out of the 113-year-old Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex in East Tennessee on Thursday. But commissioner Nick Bishop says bringing in those detainees would create jobs. He plans to introduce the proposal later this month. The state still owns the prison, but correction department spokeswoman Dorinda Carter says it could be turned over to Morgan County for economic development. She says department commissioner...

A Minnesota member of Congress is suggesting some Guantanamo Bay inmates should come to Rochester. The high security prison on the east side of town has had some big name guests—like suspected Al-Gaeda terrorist Nuradin Abdi. He was charged with plotting to blow up an Ohio mall. "I don't know what their guest list is out here, but I have got to believe they've had some pretty bad dudes out here as well," said Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede. Brede says he got a call from Democrat Rep. Tim Walz this week. Walz, like President Barack Obama, wants to close Gitmo...

Shortly after his release from Guantanamo Bay prison in 2004, Mohammed Ismail was quoted as saying, “They gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons.” Ismail was repatriated to Afghanistan but recaptured in May 2004 for participating in an attack against U.S forces in Kandahar. He was carrying a letter confirming his membership with the Taliban. Said Mohammed Alim Shah (also known as Abdullah Mahsud), after his release from Guantanamo in March 2004, kidnapped two Chinese engineers that October and directed a suicide attack in April 2007 that killed 31 people,...

While on whole, I believe that President Obama's speech today was more good than bad, the president continued to insist that GITMO would be closed by the end of January. To me, the president continues to show not only a dangerous level of hubris but he allows pride to be a deadly sin. The fact is that he made his pronouncement to close GITMO, on his second day in office, with absolutely no plan for how to close it. It's painfully clear that he still has no plan to close it.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how closing Gitmo will be better for the detainees. To suggest that they are coddled in the Caribbean is an understatement. Let's go through some details.