Free Republic

Look, I understand the the Obama White House has decided to shift to the extreme Left on policy this month. They want to pander to their base, which has been demoralized in discovering that their agenda has as much chance of passing Congress as … well, as Obama’s tax-hikes bill. But at some point, the pander will devolve into self-parody — and Eric Holder’s promise to really, really close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay qualifies as the tipping point: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the Obama administration will do its utmost to close the U.S....

Eric Holder: We aim to close Gitmo before Election Day By: MJ Lee September 20, 2011 09:46 AM EDT U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday the Obama administration is doing everything it can to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before the 2012 presidential elections. Speaking at the European Parliament, Holder said the administration is focused on closing the controversial facility “as quickly as possible, recognizing that we will face substantial pressure,” the Associated Press reports. He added that the effort to shutter the detention facility would continue even after the 2012 elections if they...

Sen. John McCain, a critic of President George W. Bush's use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terror, reflected on the “issue of torture” a decade after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. “Abu Ghraib and the torture of prisoners hurt us a great deal and did provide a propaganda tool for our enemies including Al Qaeda,” the Arizona Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." Noting that on the 10th anniversary of those attacks he did not want to dwell on his differences with the current and previous administration, McCain applauded both Bush and President Barack Obama for...

Ex-Gitmo detainee killed in AfghanistanKey al-Qaida ally organized attacks By Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Sunday, September 4, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO and Afghan forces have killed a former Guantanamo detainee who returned to Afghanistan to become a key al-Qaida ally, international officials said Saturday. The militant’s death was a reminder of the risks of trying to end a controversial detention system without letting loose people who will launch attacks on Americans. Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007, had been organizing attacks in eastern Kunar province and funding insurgent operations, NATO spokesman...

SmallBanner_050911JR_v1.jpg dss_lwj_ad2_final.jpg DVIDS: Accurate, Reliable Access 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Video, photos, and commentary from the US Military as they reflect upon and share the story of America's heroism, sacrifices and resilience. ADT Home Security LWJ Supports SoA.jpg Site Meter Link lwj-print-icon-2.jpg Comments (4) ShareThis AQAP releases biography for ex-Gitmo detainee turned 'martyr' By Thomas JoscelynSeptember 2, 2011 Salman-al-Sanaani.jpg Hani Abdo Shaalan. Image from the SITE Intelligence Group. On Aug. 30, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video celebrating former Guantanamo detainee Hani Abdo Shaalan as a "martyr." Shaalan was transferred from Guantanamo to Yemen on June...

The nominating process for the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, the hub for threat assessment within the U.S. government, is typically a routine affair. But for Matthew Olsen, President Obama's pick to lead the agency, the nomination is in jeopardy amid accusations that he misled a member of Congress when he was in charge of the administration's Guantanamo task force to close the military detention camp in 2009. Earlier this month, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.,who represents the district where the center is located, wrote to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, objecting to the nomination. Wolf said he believes...

Say, anyone have any idea how to handle a captured terrorist? Apparently not anyone in the White House, even after more than two years of running the war on terror, according to Vice Admiral William McRaven’s confidence-builder in yesterday’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. While Leon Panetta told Congress a few months ago that the Obama administration had a process figured out, they seem to have kept it from the people doing the capturing: The top military official involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden said Tuesday that the Obama administration has no clear plan for handling...

(Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday defended the Obama administration's use of criminal courts to try terrorism suspects after a renewed call to send them to military trials at the naval base in Cuba. Republicans and even some of President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats have sought to keep open the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and forced the administration to use military courts for the most significant terrorism suspects, those accused of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Prosecutors filed charges against 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators, bringing the five a step closer to facing a Guantanamo military tribunal. The charges, which must now be approved by a tribunal official, set the stage for the highest-profile Al-Qaeda suspects in custody to finally face justice almost a decade after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would reaffirm and arguably expand the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed just three days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In addition, for the first time, the administration is formally threatening a veto over Congress's efforts to limit his authority to release Guantanamo prisoners and to transfer war-on-terror prisoners held by the U.S. military to the U.S. for any reason. There is a belated quality to the veto threat since Obama previously objected to but ulitmately signed a series of bills which had provisions effectively...

FIELD TRIPS AND BIRTHDAY PARTIES CAN’T BE FAR BEHIND Just because the Obama Regime finally realized that closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison was a much better symbolic campaign promise to Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell than it was a responsible, big-boy executive decision made in the best interests of the United States doesn’t mean that we can’t have a kinder, gentler GITMO. After all, as our internationalist president says, America is different. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama claimed that it was imperative for the United States to close GITMO because it was being used as a “recruiting tool”...

The Pentagon is considering allowing the families of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to visit them, an unprecedented step to ease the isolation of inmates who in some cases have been held at the U.S. facility for close to a decade, according to congressional aides. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which monitors conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison and facilitates videoconferences between detainees and their families, has been in serious discussions with the Pentagon about a visitation program, the aides said. Some Republicans, after hearing about the talks, appeared to balk at such access to the...

The Washington Post’s Outlook section just gave ex-jihadi Moazzem Begg a half-page this Sunday to lament the U.S. war on jihadis, and Begg repaid the Post by showcasing a photoshopped image of a dead President Barack Obama on his advocacy website. Washington Post editors did not return The Daily Caller’s phone calls. The Outlook section is edited by Carlos Lozada, who reports to Marcus Brauchli, the Post’s executive editor. The Investigative Project on Terrorism directed TheDC to the photo on Begg’s website. Begg’s action came just before Thursday, when shareholders are expected to protest financial losses by the newspaper’s parent...

Attorney General vows to close Guantanamo 2:30pm EDT PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday the United States would close the Guantanamo Bay facility holding terrorism suspects in Cuba, despite missing a previous deadline to do so. On an official visit to Paris, Holder stressed what he called unprecedented intelligence-sharing ties between France and the United States against a united enemy, al Qaeda, that he said still held the two countries and its allies in its sights. The recent killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was unlikely to affect the timing of the closure of...

There have been a number of pieces written about why the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has remained open. I believe Rush Limbaugh was alone in predicting it would not be closed by the Obama administration, and he maintained that even after the Exective Order issued by President Obama on January 22, 2009. Many analysts have expounded on why this was never accomplished. Basically, the thinking is that the Democrats cannot afford to be seen as being weak on Defense. What I find fascinating is HOW this was never accomplished. Did the military and political leaders say, "Just ignore...

Some liberals are trying to give all of the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden to Barack Obama and his enlightened leadership. But if we had fought the war on terrorism the way liberals wanted us to fight it, bin Laden would still be alive today and we wouldn’t have the first clue of how to find him. The New York Times and MSNBC have confirmed that the nom de guerre of a key courier for bin Laden, “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,” was obtained by interrogating detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. If we had listened to the liberals, Guantanamo...

Is anyone except me bothered by the fact that the President, Mr. Panetta, et al, have repeatedly broken one of the primary rules of intel - namely that professionals never reveal the sources and methods by which they obtain information. On one level, it was good to know that enhanced interrogation techniques (previously reviled by Liberals as only being used by horrible people) have netted usable informaiton, and that we are clever and patient enough to track down the courier that was servicing the OBL compound. But at a higher level, letting the world know how we obtained sufficient detail...

In an especially well-timed release this week, Richard Miniter’s MASTERMIND: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed reveals Mohammed’s rise to the top of Al Qaeda and his planning of the jihadist attacks on America in 2001. More than that, though, Miniter’s book includes shocking new disclosures about how the US treats its detainees. Miniter tells Big Peace: I was stunned to learn while researching Mastermind that Guantanamo detainees succeeded in convincing prison officials to no longer raise the American flag anywhere they could see it. Each morning on every U.S. military base around the world, the...

RUSH: Now, let's review. Let's review, ladies and gentlemen, and let's do this with pure and total objectivity, exactly where we are today, just shortly after noon on the 3rd of May, 2011. An American president with admittedly incomplete intelligence, intelligence provided by people, techniques, and agencies reviled, ridiculed, and opposed by this American president, invades a foreign and supposedly friendly nation without its knowledge or consent, using information extracted from Guantanamo detainees, a place that the sitting president opposes, techniques to acquire this information opposed by this president and his regime. The information provided by waterboarding, it was said...

Obama in 2009: "Now- I know some have argued thatbrutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep this country safe... but I could not disagree more" who we ought to be thanking Fact 1: Waterboarding found Bin Laden Fact 2: The interrogation took place at Gitmo Fact 3: Obama banned waterboarding in 2009...   then issued an Executive Order to close Gitmo! Who in their right mind would give even one quark of credit for enabling the American intelligence services to succeed in dispatching Osama Bin Laden to this sanctimonious strategic moron Barack Obama? He's opposed almost everything that enabled the CIA/Pentagon to ever even get close to Bin...