Free Republic

Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling. An American president, with incomplete intelligence, invades a foreign — and friendly(!) —power, without its knowledge or consent. Using data gathered from Gitmo detainees subjected to “enhanced interrogation” the president gives the “kill order” for a target in a private residence, one where women and children are known to congregate. And after 22 foreign nationals are captured or killed at the hands of Navy SEALS — without any NATO or U.N. authorization — the president doesn’t apologize for it. He brags about it. Then it’s confirm that he ordered the SEALS to throw the target’s...

Years of intelligence gathering, including details gleaned from controversial interrogations of Al Qaeda members during the Bush administration, ultimately led the Navy SEALs who killed Usama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan. The initial threads of intelligence began surfacing in 2003 and came in the form of information about a trusted bin Laden courier, a senior U.S. official told Fox News on condition of anonymity. Bin Laden had cut off all traditional lines of communication with his network by this time because the Al Qaeda leader knew the U.S. intelligence community was monitoring him. It was said that he...

DEVELOPING: Usama bin Laden was given a religious funeral prior to his burial at sea, senior military officials told Fox News. Religious rites were conducted on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier at about 1:10 a.m. Monday in the Persian Gulf. In accordance with Islamic practice, bin Laden was washed and wrapped in a white sheet before buried at sea at 2 p.m. local time, senior U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

Libs will be deeply disturbed to know that the intel leading our magnificent SEALS to the compound where Binny was kickin it in the ‘burbs for God knows how long came from a Gitmo detainee. We’ve listened to nearly a decade of liberal caterwauling about the sinister uselessness of the seaside resort known as Club Gitmo which wrongfully houses a bunch of harmless do gooders. Yet, their beloved president never did get around to shutting the place down. As in all things, liberals had it completely wrong.

Wikileaks has revealed a US report on Guantanamo terrorist prisoners called the “Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants.” You will see this document written up in dozens of articles in the media and the blogosphere over the next few days. We wanted to call attention to one list that has come out of that report: a list of foreign mosques and Islamic centers that are used to recruit and train Jihadis.

Chrystia Freeland has called the US prison system an "American Gulag Archipelago." The Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters made her comment during today's Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC. The context was a discussion of the recent WikiLeaks document dump about Gitmo, but Freeland was clearly speaking of the domestic US prison system, not our military prisons. Ratigan picked up on her theme, saying we could cut our prison costs in half if marijuana were legalized. View video after the jump [with apologies for mediocre quality]. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein#ixzz1KZr0yJV6

On Sept. 11, 2001, the core of al-Qaeda was concentrated in a single city: Karachi, Pakistan. At a hospital, the accused mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole was recovering from a tonsillectomy. Nearby, the alleged organizer of the 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia, was buying lab equipment for a biological weapons program. And in a safe house, the man who would later describe himself as the intellectual author of the Sept. 11 attacks was with other key al-Qaeda members watching the scenes from New York and Washington unfold on television.

Thousands of pages of previously secret military documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison now put a name, a history and a face on hundreds of men in captivity there. The documents include details on 158 men on whom no information has ever been released. The hundreds of classified documents - marked "secret" and "noforn" meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries - are assessments, interviews and internal memos from the Pentagon's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo. The task force was supposed to determine who the detainees were, how they might be connected...

WASHINGTON, April 20, 2011 – The chief prosecutor of the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions has recommended that capital charges be brought against the alleged mastermind behind the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, a Pentagon spokesman said today. The charges assert that Abd al Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al Nashiri was responsible for planning and preparing terrorists to attack the U.S. Navy warship in the Yemini port of Aden, Navy Capt. Darryn James said. The Cole was in the harbor for a routine fuel stop when a small watercraft approached the ship’s port side and exploded. The bombing...

On FOXNews this AM. CIA operatives are now actively declining to interrogate captured terrorists or move them to Guantanamo. With Obama/Holder prosecutors hovering over every case, trying to find ways to indict CIA officers, and Guantanamo becoming nothing more than R & R for the terrorists, experienced CIA officers now refuse to have anything to do with captured terrorists. One case in point was a long-sought terrorist HVT captured by Pakistanis. When CIA was contacted to come question or take custody of him, CIA declined.

Judicial Watch Wins Motion in SB 1070 Lawsuit! This week, let’s start with a big Judicial Watch victory. On Wednesday, April 5, our client, the Arizona State Legislature, was granted permission to intervene as a defendant in the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit against SB 1070, Arizona’s get-tough illegal immigration law. Judge Susan Bolton granted Judicial Watch’s motion over the objections of the Obama DOJ. Here’s a quick squib from the order, which was short and sweet: On February 7, 2011, Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1117 (“S.B. 1117”), which provides that “the Speaker...

Obama has broken just about all of his promises to supporters such as closing Gitmo, ending enhanced interrogation, start withdrawing troops from Iraq and end the war (not start another), try terrorists in U.S. courts… all lies Why? Maybe someone in the CIA or FBI showed him his real birth certificate?

I never thought I'd say it, but I miss Janet Reno. I never thought I'd ever again see an Attorney General of such incompetence, yet here we are. In what CNN calls "A long line of Obama shifts" Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheik Mohammaed would be tried in a military tribunal instead of a civilian court. The poor man whined about Congress interfering and forcing him to try KSM in the military rather than the civilian system. He made it clear that he believes he knows better than Congress what to do with KSM: Expressing his disappointment in...

Joe Scarborough has unloaded on the moral preening and hypocrisy of President Obama and his supporters over Gitmo and military tribunals. In the wake of AG Eric Holder's announcement that not only will Gitmo remain open, but that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists will be tried there before military tribunals, Scarborough unleashed an extended, scathing indictment on today's Morning Joe. Mika Brzezinski did her best, fighting a rear-guard action in defense of the president. View video here.

McCain/Lieberman: "It is the right decision and we strongly commend the President and the Attorney General for reaching this decision."

It took 500 days, but President Obama yesterday abandoned his ill-conceived effort to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom. Attorney General Eric Holder was none too gracious about it, however. It was back in November 2009 that Obama and Holder docketed KSM and four confederates for trial in New York. An uproar ensued -- understandably -- and Congress promptly outlawed the movement of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US. There the matter stood for some 15 months -- until yesterday, when Holder announced that the deadly quintet will now return to military commissions at Gitmo, right...

<p>WASHINGTON – Yielding to political opposition, the Obama administration has decided to refer avowed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged henchmen to the system of military commissions for trial rather than to a civilian federal court in New York, a federal law enforcement official said Monday.</p>

Lawyers fighting to free detainees thought they gained ground in 2008 when the Supreme Court gave prisoners the right to a trial and Obama was elected president. But nothing much has changed, and now a series of appeals may be doomed. Reporting from Washington— The lawyers who spent years fighting to free prisoners at Guantanamo Bay thought they had won in 2008, when the Supreme Court gave detainees a right to go to court and Barack Obama was elected president. But things haven't worked out as they had hoped. Last month, President Obama reversed a campaign promise and announced plans...

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration's top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals. Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City...

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.