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U.S. Ill Prepared for Convicted Jihadis Ending Their Prison Sentences

February 9, 2017

U.S. Ill Prepared for Convicted Jihadis Ending Their Prison Sentences, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Patrick Dunleavy, February 8, 2017

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The old adage, “Out of sight, out of mind” does not apply to dealing effectively with the threat of Islamism especially in the case of terrorists who have been captured or incarcerated.

Radical Islamic organizations such as al-Qaida and ISIS never forget their members. To them, going to prison is part of the pathway to paradise. Both groups’ leaders, Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent considerable periods of time locked up. It did nothing to diminish their zeal, but rather, fueled their fervor. Often, as in their cases, what comes out of prison is worse than what went in.

This is further illustrated by the increased number of terrorists released from Guantanamo who rejoin the fight against U.S. military personnel. Almost one in three released prisoners return to the jihadists’ fold. This recidivism can be attributed in part to the admonitions terrorists receive to assist those who are captured or imprisoned. That support may include financial help for their families and for legal fees.

These instructions were found in a training manual discovered in 2000 by law enforcement officers in Manchester, England.

“I take this opportunity to address our prisoners. We have not forgotten you,” al-Zawahiri said in an interview with Al Shabab commemorating the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “We are still committed to the debt of your salvation . . . until we shatter your shackles.”

AQAP’s Inspire magazine went so far as to list the names of incarcerated members for all to remember.

They do this because jihadis firmly believe that sooner or later they’ll be reunited with those members.

If that isn’t ominous enough, consider the fact that as many as 100 people convicted of terror-related offenses in U.S. prisons will be set free in less than four years.

And yet, while Islamic terrorist organizations have rapidly changed in their recruitment and tactical methodologies overall, the U.S. has not adapted to countering the evolving threat.

In the United States, the number of terror-related incidents increased exponentially since 9-11. As they did, authorities adapted new ways to investigate. State of the art technologies help collect and analyze data. Fusion centers were created to get the information into the hands of investigators in real time. Counter terrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies joined together to share.

Legislation has changed how the judicial system prosecutes terrorists. “Our criminal law was unprepared for international terrorism. We simply did not have statutes and penalties that fit what terrorists do,” said former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution against the first World Trade Center bombers and blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

A vigorous debate continues whether to treat terrorists as criminals or as enemy combatants. A reasonable consensus among the military and the judicial branches is building for the use of both designations.

Two significant changes, in policy and practice, toward radical Islamic terrorists remain to be addressed.

Terrorists go into prison much the same way as the burglar, the drug dealer, or the pedophile. They are housed and fed in existing correctional facilities with common criminals. No mandatory rehabilitation or de-radicalization programs exist for convicted Islamic terrorists. And when they are released, there is no specialized supervisory program applied to monitor their employment or whereabouts.

This situation has to change if we are to deal effectively with terrorism. We should establish a registration list for convicted terrorists. This would provide local authorities with the identity of those recently released to their communities. It has been successfully used with sex offenders. It can work if properly applied.

With as many as 500 terrorists now in custody and more to come, the custodial system must also evolve in how it handles jihadists. Security classification must not be downgraded simply because the terrorist has become “jail wise” (exhibited good behavior) like “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, who will be released from prison in two years.

Special administrative measures – conditions of confinement – which restrict visits, correspondence and other prison privileges assigned to terrorists must continue.

Uniform security standards for imprisoned terrorists should be established in the federal, state, and local correctional facilities. Jose Padilla, the alleged “dirty bomber” who first learned of a radical form of Islam while in a Florida county jail and was originally sentenced to life in prison, is scheduled to be released in eight years. Who will be the parole officers assigned to supervise him and will those officers be afforded any specialized training before that happens?

In some cases, specialized facilities like Guantanamo are necessary in dealing with enemy combatants and other committed jihadists. They are effective. No anecdotal evidence has been presented showing them to be a recruitment tool for ISIS or al Qaida. That is like saying that Alcatraz was responsible for the increase in violent crime.

The number of people arrested in the U.S. for terrorism-related crimes nearly tripled in 2015. That year, FBI Director James Comey testified that more than 200 people traveled overseas from the United States in an attempt to fight alongside ISIS or al-Qaida related groups in the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2016, Comey said his agents still had 1,000 open cases related to ISIS. Within the next few years, he said, there may be a “terrorist diaspora” of ISIS fighters leaving the battlefield of Syria and returning to their home countries, committed to carrying out more terrorist attacks.

We can only hope that the vast majority will be apprehended before they can carry out attacks here in the United States. And when they are, we had better be prepared to effectively deal with them throughout their entire time in the system. Anything less is unacceptable to the citizens of this great country.

Categories: GITMO, Islamic terrorists, Terrorists being released from prison
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Al Qaeda Chief: Use of Female Guard Denies Him Justice, Violates Muslim Rights

February 3, 2017

Al Qaeda Chief: Use of Female Guard Denies Him Justice, Violates Muslim Rights, Judicial Watch, February 2, 2017

An Al Qaeda leader and close associate of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) accused the U.S. government of denying him justice because a female guard escorted him to a recent court hearing in violation of his Islamic religious beliefs. His name is Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, one of 17 high-value prisoners at the U.S. military compound in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and he’s being tried for running Al Qaeda’s army in Afghanistan, ordering attacks against American and coalition forces and civilians.

Judicial Watch was present at Hadi’s proceedings and has covered almost all the Military Commission hearings since KSM’s arraignment in 2008. The Department of Defense (DOD) approved Judicial Watch to monitor the terrorist trials as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and Judicial Watch attorneys, investigators and reporters have witnessed a deep commitment to justice by military and civilian lawyers involved in the proceedings. Trials and hearings are held in a specially constructed, top security courtroom at the Naval Station in southeastern Cuba. Judicial Watch has also covered every proceeding conducted by President Obama’s special Guantanamo Periodic Review Board (PRB) via live broadcasts at the Pentagon. Comprised of senior officials from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, the board reviews whether continued detention of certain individuals remains necessary to protect against significant threat to the security of the United States.

The charges against Hadi, an Iraqi national in his 50s, extend more than ten pages and outline his relationship with Osama bin Laden and plans to execute Al Qaeda’s objectives of “killing Americans and other civilians.” He is also charged with killing a U.S. solider, injuring and killing numerous German soldiers and planning a number of other attacks. In 2002, Hadi and KSM plotted to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, according to his DOD charging document. At the same time, KSM gave Hadi $100,000 for Al Qaeda operations and Hadi ordered numerous attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan as well as civilians working for the United Nations. Hadi was captured in Gaziantep, Turkey while traveling from Afghanistan to Iraq in October 2006, the military file states.

During a recent arraignment in Gitmo, Hadi refused to be transferred to the courtroom by a group of guards that included a female because being touched by a strange woman violates his religious beliefs. His attorneys asked the military judge to replace the female guard with a man, but the judge refused. No criminal justice system in the world allows the defendant to decide the rules of the court. Furthermore, sidelining a woman at the request of the defendant goes against any moves the military has made to treat men and women equally. Hadi was eventually brought into the courtroom against his will, shackled into a wheelchair with straps that resembled a seatbelt on an airplane. He waved his arms, requesting permission to address the court and the military judge allowed it. Hadi rambled on about his religious rights and said that when a female guard tries to escort him he will not be able to meet with his lawyers and won’t come to court. “So I don’t know how we can achieve justice here,” he told the judge. A Middle Eastern news report on Hadi’s arraignment points out that the Islamic State is notorious for raping helpless Kurdish women and no extremist organization, including Al Qaeda, complains that it violates Islamic rules.

In 2015 Hadi’s attorneys filed a request for religious accommodation with the Office of Military Commissions in an effort to dictate the compound’s guard schedule. The document says Hadi is a “devout Muslim” and it’s a violation of his Islamic faith to have physical contact with females that aren’t his wife or close relatives. “Islam is two things—worship and rules,” the document states. “Both come from God as revealed to the Prophet.” The document proceeds to reveal that Hadi has been forcibly extracted three times because of his religious beliefs and that he will continue to resist when a female guard is assigned to him. “If female guards must have physical contact with me to bring me to meetings with my attorneys or to court, my faith requires me to refuse those movements, and I will continue to refuse them…”

Categories: Al Qaeda, GITMO, Islam and females, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism
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Obama’s Parting Shot At Hillary: Admits Collusion Between Clinton Foundation and Obama state Department

January 22, 2017

Obama’s Parting Shot At Hillary: Admits Collusion Between Clinton Foundation and Obama state Department, Investment Watch, Pamela Williams, January 22, 2017

(All bold print is from the original article.  Please see also, Guess who was left unpardoned! — DM)

Obama takes a parting shot at Hillary Clinton during his last night as President.  He admits to the American Center of Law and Justice that his State Department worked with the Clinton Foundation to secure a position as a “favor.” I guess Obama truly wanted to do the right thing before he left office.  Many thought he would pardon Clinton, but he chose not to do that.  Further, he chose to reveal this information of collusion between his State Department and the Clinton Foundation.  We all knew it was happening, but now we have the outgoing President of the United States coming clean to the American Center of Law and Justice.
In case you are not familiar with the ACLJ here is the following:  Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, is based in Washington, D.C. and is online at www.aclj.org.  We thank them for their excellent work for the American people.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which has filed a number of federal lawsuits against the Obama Administration to obtain information through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, said today it has received a response from the Obama State Department – on the eve of President Obama’s final day in office – revealing the name of a person who received a top position in the Obama Administration after the Clinton Foundation urged then Secretary of State Clinton’s aides to do a “favor” for a person who ended up getting a top job in the State Department.

In the fall of 2016, Judicial Watch received hundreds of pages of documents from the State Department – including an email exchange between Clinton Foundation Executive Doug Band and top aides to then Secretary Clinton – Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills – urging them to do a “favor” noting it was “important to take care of [name redacted]” – an individual whose name was redacted by the State Department.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aclj-obama-administrations-parting-shot-admits-state-department-worked-with-clinton-foundation-to-secure-position-as-favor-300394251.html

We are seeing those old familiar names appearing again, as we discover a new revelation from President Obama.  We, also, are able to view the documents in question.  The following documents give the individual’s name and reveal he was given a top position in the State Department on the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GITMO).  

http://media.aclj.org/pdf/ACLJ-(Records)-Production-001_2-For-Release.pdf

Brock Johnson was the appointee, who received the “favor.” I am sure this is one favor Obama regrets giving.  According to documents provided by the State Department, the person who received the “favor” is Brock Johnson, identified in news reports as a former Obama campaign operative.  According to the State Department, Johnson was hired in May 2009 – two weeks after the Clinton Foundation email asking for a “favor” – as “Special Assistant to the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure.”  The job description states that he was to help the Special Envoy “in furtherance of President Obama’s order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.”

We see an old name pop up from Clinton’s campaign, Cheryl Mills, who was Johnson’s supervisor.  His job was classified as “critical sensitive” at the State Department.

“This is exactly the kind of collusion between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department that is totally inappropriate,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “We suspected that this type of behavior was taking place and now we have proof.  It’s both troubling and unfortunate that the Obama State Department – under the direction of then Secretary Clinton – engaged in such activity and worse yet that both Secretary Clinton and the State Department went to great lengths to conceal this inappropriate action.”

In addition to the ongoing litigation involving collusion with the Clinton Foundation, the ACLJ continues its ongoing litigation against President Obama’s continuing legacy – the out-of-control bureaucracy – over the Iran lie, inaction on genocide, and the secret meeting between Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aclj-obama-administrations-parting-shot-admits-state-department-worked-with-clinton-foundation-to-secure-position-as-favor-300394251.html

In conclusion, this is a win for we the people, and I thank the ACLJ for all their persistence and hard work.  This should also help Rep. Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee, as he performs his investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

I, also, would like to thank President Obama for not pardoning Hillary Clinton, and revealing the collusion between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_RksSswmiY

 

FROM VIDEO:

Published on Jan 16, 2017

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Based on the testimony of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for Attorney General of the United States, an investigation of Hillary’s emails and/or the Clinton Foundation could result in an indictment. If this happens, MANY OTHER PEOPLE/ENTITIES could be implicated, including Barack Obama himself, in Hillary’s crimes.

Hillary is guilty, already, of numerous crimes including harboring classified information on an undesignated, non-governmental server. Several brave military men in the U.S. have been convicted with FAR LESS evidence, and some of these people are facing lengthy prison sentences. James Comey of the FBI, however, decided to ignore Hillary’s obvious crimes and not indict. This was purely political and will tarnish his reputation.

We know that Comey was influenced by a rogue operative in the state department named Patrick Kennedy, who has worked in the department since the 1970s. Based on reports in the media and confirmed now by the FBI report that was declassified, Patrick Kennedy engaged in a quid pro quo with Comey’s FBI in order to keep Hillary safe from an indictment. He got what he wanted, Comey dismissed the opportunity to press charges on at least two occasions, despite testifying before Congress that Hillary Clinton did, indeed, store classified intelligence on her server.

Categories: Clinton corruption, Clinton Foundation, Clinton pardons, Department of State, GITMO, Obama and GITMO
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UK jihadi freed from Guantanamo flees to Syria to join al-Qaeda

January 8, 2017

UK jihadi freed from Guantanamo flees to Syria to join al-Qaeda, Jihad Watch, , January 8, 2017

All the UK-related Guantanamo inmates have now been released and, between them, have received a total of £20 million in High Court compensation paid for by the British taxpayer.

The money was handed over after detainees sued MI5 and MI6 for complicity in their alleged torture at the hands of the Americans.

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Obama plans, in his final days in office, to replenish the enemy ranks even further by freeing more hardened, committed, battle-trained jihadis from Guantanamo.

guantanamo

“British jihadi who was freed from Guantanamo Bay ‘has fled to Syria to join Al Qaeda,’” by Omar Wahid and Nick Craven, The Mail on Sunday, January 7, 2017 (thanks to David):

A jihadi from Britain who claims to be a former Guantanamo Bay detainee has fled to Syria where he is now fighting for Al Qaeda.

The terrorist – who has dubbed himself Abu Mugheera Al-Britani, meaning ‘from Britain’ – has written in detail about his experience in the notorious US prison camp.

Although Al-Britani’s real identity has not been established, at least 16 UK nationals and residents were held at the military camp in Cuba.

His account will fuel concerns that some freed terror suspects have not abandoned their fanatical ideology and could remain a threat to the public. It will also raise fears that compensation paid to former inmates is helping to fund terror campaigns.

All the UK-related Guantanamo inmates have now been released and, between them, have received a total of £20 million in High Court compensation paid for by the British taxpayer.

The money was handed over after detainees sued MI5 and MI6 for complicity in their alleged torture at the hands of the Americans.

Al-Britani claims he ‘spent years’ at Guantanamo Bay, where more than 700 of the world’s most dangerous Islamic terrorists were imprisoned in the aftermath of 9/11.

In an online magazine for fanatics, he writes: ‘Sitting in the blessed land of al-Shaam [Greater Syria], reflecting on those weeks and days spent behind bars, I thank Allah for releasing me and providing me with the opportunity of carrying out jihad in his path again.’…

Categories: Al Qaeda, GITMO, GITMO prisoner releases, Obama and GITMO terrorists
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Architect of CIA Enhanced Interrogation: ‘We Interrogate Terrorists Like That to Stop Attacks’

December 9, 2016

Architect of CIA Enhanced Interrogation: ‘We Interrogate Terrorists Like That to Stop Attacks’, Washington Free Beacon, , December 9, 2016

This idea that the jihadis are going to quit trying to destroy America or kill Americans because Gitmo closes: in my mind, that’s insane. That’s just a narcissistic thing that somebody wants to do for their own legacy. Not because it’s going to make Americans any safer. I can’t imagine a situation in which some guy who has been crucifying children, or setting people on fire in cages, or decapitating people, and cutting the throats of Yezidi sex slaves so they can bleed out in a great big bowl, and believes that’s an act of worship, I can’t believe they are suddenly going to look and say, “Oh, they’re going to close Gitmo. I’m done with this.” That’s not going to happen.

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Interview: Dr. James Mitchell debunks myths on the CIA’s interrogation program

black-site-1National Registry Office for Classified Information near Bucharest, Romania. Between 2003 and 2006, CIA operated secret prison from building’s basement / AP

Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, psychologist and U.S. Air Force veteran Dr. James Mitchell was called back to national service. Along with a partner, Bruce Jessen, he was tasked with developing the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs. Designed to elicit time-sensitive intelligence from hardened al Qaeda leaders, the EITs later became immersed in controversy. In 2014, Senate Democrats released a report accusing Mitchell of torturing suspects with EITs and producing no results.

In his new book, Enhanced Interrogation, Mitchell offers his own testimony on the EITs. He argues that the techniques were critical in saving the lives of Americans and others. The Washington Free Beacon interviewed Mitchell on Thursday to discuss his new book.

Washington Free Beacon: What motivated you to write Enhanced Interrogation?

James Mitchell: Senator Dianne Feinstein put out that one-sided [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] SSCI report on the CIA Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, and the press ignored the SSCI report from the Republican minority, which pushed back against it. And the CIA pushed back. In addition, reporters, when they contacted me, said that Feinstein’s staffers had told them on deep background who Bruce and I were. We had these pseudonyms in the book. So Feinstein just outed us. And then after that, there has been all kinds of misinformation about the program. So I wrote the book because I really believed Americans needed to know what was done in their name to keep them safe after 9/11.

WFB: Why do you think there was such a profound bias against you and your CIA colleagues?

Mitchell: Feinstein’s report read like a prosecutorial brief to me. I’ve got extensive experience doing all kinds of investigations. And I’ve read a prosecutorial briefing. Feinstein interviewed no one who was involved in the program. Not one director, not one high-level intelligence officer. Not one guard, not one analyst.

I think what [SSCI Democrats] wanted to do was poison the American mind with this, because in part Feinstein had the wrong idea about what was done. One of the reasons I wrote the book was to try and dispel the idea that the detainees were subjected to enhanced interrogations the whole time they were [at CIA black sites]. You know, Abu Zubaydah was enhanced-interrogated for about two weeks in the entire time he was with CIA. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was only enhanced-interrogated for three weeks. And he was never enhanced-interrogated again, even though some in the CIA were pushing to go back to enhanced-interrogations to try and find Osama bin Laden. The interrogators weren’t willing to do it, because we don’t interrogate people like that to find people; we do it to stop attacks.

WFB: What is your personal response to the treatment you received in the Senate report?

Mitchell: Feinstein maims us in every place she thinks she can smear us. And in those places where we could potentially be seen as doing the right thing, [she doesn’t give us recognition]. For example, [SSCI Democrats] say that Bruce wrote a cable in which he recommended EITs [on a prisoner at a black site]. But what Bruce actually said–and this is a verbatim quote–is that “EITs are not the first, nor best option for getting information” from [that suspect] because he’s too tough. What [Bruce] did recommend is heaters, food, blankets, get rid of the indigenous guards–get an American down there at night–and if you’re going to get interrogators down there, get people who are trained.

WFB: To what degree do you believe Islamist extremist thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and Ibn Taymiyyah influence terrorist leaders like KSM more than the unique personality of each terrorist leader?

Mitchell: They absolutely believe, the way I can’t believe I can breathe underwater, that there is a paradise. They absolutely believe that Allah has given them a mandate to purify the Earth, to get rid of all the infidels. To bring peace by subjugating, converting, slaughtering, or enslaving everyone. It took me a year to get my head around it. I’ve dealt with some people who have strong beliefs, but I’ve never dealt with people whose beliefs almost bordered on magic to me. What I think happened in the case of people like KSM is that their personalities and who they are influence how those beliefs are expressed. But beliefs drive behavior and it gets colored by the personality, but ultimately, they are Islamists. They are trying to impose sharia law on the world. And their beliefs about their mandate and need to purify, rather than being a relatively new phenomenon, they’re trying to breathe new life into these traditions from 1,400 years ago.

khalid-1Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture / AP

WFB: If you were president of the United States, what would your high-value detention program look like?

Mitchell: What the president has to ask himself is: What’s he going to do when he has reliable intelligence that there’s going to be another catastrophic attack–possibly involving nuclear weapons, like we had right after 9/11–to get the person who has the information to tell us that information? And that person is good at withholding information and they don’t want to give it up. I know, because we tried it with all of them, to get them to speak before they were ever given enhanced-interrogation. KSM is an excellent example of it. Before he was transferred to a black site, he had several days in which he was given tea and polite conversation. During that time he prayed and chanted. One of the interrogators during that period wore Pakistani dress [to try and earn KSM’s respect]. KSM later told me he thought those guys were clowns.

WFB: Some of your critics say that al Qaeda’s London plots against Canary Wharf/Heathrow were exaggerated. What’s your response?

Mitchell: Here’s why they say that. They say that if [the terrorists] are not inside the door with their backpacks on, it’s not an operational threat. But you know, the thing that saved most of the world from another catastrophic attack is that President Bush didn’t treat [9/11] like a law-enforcement issue. But when we did respond with military force, it threw them off balance. And on the London plots, Ramzi bin al-Shibh was behind that and he was working on it right when we picked him up. [Underplaying that threat] is a little bit like someone saying the guy down the street wants to kill you but he hasn’t loaded his weapon just yet, he’s not driving to your house yet. So when you stop him getting into his car, he wasn’t really coming to kill you. It’s a silly idea.

WFB: To what degree do you believe the Obama administration has taken too far of a step back from detaining and interrogating those who might be able to help us prevent Islamic State attacks?

Mitchell: I believe that we need a detention and interrogation program that focuses on actionable intelligence. That we don’t have that, I think, puts us at grave risk. I think that President Obama has stepped all the way back. But what I would do is quote KSM. When KSM was telling me that he expected George W. Bush to do exactly what Ronald Reagan had done and exactly what Clinton had done, to me that conveys that these guys look at how people have handled these situations in the past. And I think all you have to do is look at how the Obama administration has handled this problem.

We’re seeing more of these kinds of attacks because, quite frankly, the Obama administration is trying to manage it like a problem [as if the terrorists] can exist in our midst. The president treats it like a law enforcement problem, as opposed to how Bush did it–it’s a declaration of war. KSM expected that the [post-9/11 response] would be a law enforcement investigation and that the [Department of Justice] would try and extradite them from the Taliban. He expected that this would give them time to get other large-scale attacks off.

If U.S. policy continues to be what it is–if we don’t even call the problem, the problem–I think the [terrorists] would be emboldened by it. Here’s the problem that people in America don’t understand. [Terrorists] really do believe that our civil liberties, our willingness to be open to people, our tolerance, our multicultural diversity, they believe those are all weapons that Allah has provided them. [They believe] these things are flaws in us.

WFB: How do you feel about President Obama’s intention to close down the terrorist detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay?

Mitchell: I have mixed feelings about it. I have seen a Federal supermax prison. The [terrorists’] lives will be much, much worse in a Federal supermax prison. But I don’t want them on U.S. soil. So until there’s a federal prison that can isolate them from outside contact, I don’t think they should be on U.S. soil. KSM said that our desire to have the world be like us is a great flaw. He said that we lack the stomach to do what must be done to defeat them. Or even to protect ourselves.

This idea that the jihadis are going to quit trying to destroy America or kill Americans because Gitmo closes: in my mind, that’s insane. That’s just a narcissistic thing that somebody wants to do for their own legacy. Not because it’s going to make Americans any safer. I can’t imagine a situation in which some guy who has been crucifying children, or setting people on fire in cages, or decapitating people, and cutting the throats of Yezidi sex slaves so they can bleed out in a great big bowl, and believes that’s an act of worship, I can’t believe they are suddenly going to look and say, “Oh, they’re going to close Gitmo. I’m done with this.” That’s not going to happen.

I asked KSM about this. What he told me was that if it wasn’t Gitmo it would be something else: “We need something to stir things up.” The [terrorists] are going to find something because they need a place holder. Gitmo is what we’re fixated on; it’s not what they’re fixated on. The way you fight these hardcore guys is to make their mission look less sexy. They fear strength. They regard our efforts to look conciliatory as a weakness, as a gift to them from God.

gitmo-delta-1Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba / AP

WFB: Knowing all you know now, and having experienced all you have experienced, would you do it again?

Mitchell: [The CIA] presented all this information to me [when they asked for my help]. But really I thought I shouldn’t do this, this is going to ruin my life. And then I thought to myself, nothing in my ethics or my moral code said to me, I should put the temporary discomfort of a terrorist before saving hundreds of lives. I mean, I couldn’t live with myself. For some people that’s a hypothetical question that they can answer by taking the moral high ground. But for me it was a real question, I mean [CIA] really was asking me this. So I would make sure that what I did was legal. But if there was another situation where there was a catastrophic attack and there was credible intelligence that it was imminent, I would get out of the chair today and go do it.

WFB: Is there anything else that you want to add?

Mitchell: I would ask people to get familiar with what [ISIS/al Qaeda] ideology involves. We do not understand the depth of their commitment. The only way they can avoid the torment of the grave is to get up every day and try to figure out how they can convert, kill, enslave, or humiliate everyone else on the planet.

They want to purify the planet.

Categories: CIA, Enhanced interrogation, GITMO, Islamic terrorism, Islamist objectives
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Saudi Jihadi Rehab Actually Encourages Jihad

November 29, 2016

Saudi Jihadi Rehab Actually Encourages Jihad, Front Page Magazine (The Point, Daniel Greenfield, November 28, 2016

four_lions_menus_3_2

You wouldn’t let Guinness or Budweiser run AA. Having the Saudis run a Jihadi rehab program is just as much of a joke. And yet our leaders went along with the joke by pretending that the Saudis were helping transform bad misunderstanders of Islam into good Muslims through Koran lessons and some R&R. The notion that Islam is best fought with Islam came to characterize CVE.

And it’s a bad joke.

Counterterrorism experts have long suspected Saudi Arabia’s “rehabilitation” center for terrorists does a poor job of de-radicalizing jihadists. But a Saudi detainee at Guantanamo Bay now reveals it’s actually a recruiting and training factory for jihad.

According to recently declassified documents, senior al Qaeda operative Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi told a Gitmo parole board that the Saudi government has been encouraging previously released prisoners to rejoin the jihad at its terrorist reform school, officially known as the Prince Mohammed bin Naif Counseling and Care Center.

The Obama administration has praised the effectiveness of the Saudi rehab program — which uses “art therapy,” swimming, ping-pong, PlayStation and soccer to de-radicalize terrorists — and conditioned the release of dozens of Gitmo prisoners, including former Osama bin Laden bodyguards, on their entry in the controversial program.

Al-Sharbi dropped a bombshell on the Gitmo parole board at his hearing earlier this year, when he informed members that the Saudi kingdom was playing them for suckers. “You guys want to send me back to Saudi Arabia because you believe there is a de-radicalization program on the surface.

True. You are 100% right, there is a strong — externally, a strong — de-radicalization program,” al-Sharbi testified. “But make no mistake, underneath there is a hidden radicalization program,” he added. “There is a very hidden strong — way stronger in magnitude — broader in financing, in all that.”

Al-Sharbi is one of the longest serving, and most unrepentant, prisoners at Gitmo. A Saudi national with an electrical engineering degree from King Fahd University, he attended a US flight school associated with two of the 9/11 hijackers. He traveled to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 and trained at an al Qaeda camp, building IEDs to use against allied forces.

Al-Sharbi was captured March 28, 2002, at an al Qaeda safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan, with senior al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. According to his US intel dossier, he told interrogators that “the US got what it deserved from the terrorist attacks on 9/11.”

Given a chance at parole after 14 years, however, Al-Sharbi was surprisingly frank with the board.

He explained that Riyadh is actively recruiting and training fighters to battle Iranian elements in neighboring Yemen and Syria. Saudi views Shiite-controlled Iran as a regional threat to its security.

“They’re launching more wars and the [United] States is backing off from the region,” he said. “They’re poking their nose here and here and there and they’re recruiting more jihadists, and they’ll tell you, ‘Okay, go fight in Yemen. Go fight in Syria.’ ”

Al-Sharbi said the Saudis also are “encouraging” former detainees “to fight their jihad in the States.”

This isn’t a mystery to anyone. We simply insist on pretending that the Saudis aren’t involved in terror.

Categories: Countering violent extremism, GITMO, Islam in Saudi Arabia, Islamic deradicalization, Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia
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Obama Freed High RIsk Terrorist Named “Jihad” From GITMO, Now He’s on the Run

June 19, 2016

Obama Freed High RIsk Terrorist Named “Jihad” From GITMO, Now He’s on the Run, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 19, 2016

Jihad

Another reminder of how little Obama values the safety and security of Americans.

Obama freed Jihad Ahmed Mustafa Dhiab from Gitmo despite a security evaluation that he posed a high risk to Americans. He was even listed as an associate of September 11 recruiter Muhammad Zammar.

Despite that he was freed and you can guess what happened next.

Law enforcement officials in Uruguay are scrambling after a former Guantanamo Bay detainee seemingly vanished into thin air.

Jihad Ahmed Mustafa Dhiab, a Syrian national who was released from Gitmo to Uruguay in 2014, is believed to have disappeared across the border to Brazil.

It is not known if Dhiab, who was supposed to be under strict surveillance by the Uruguayan government, crossed into Brazil with the appropriate legal documents.

“We are coordinating with officials in Brazil and Uruguay to determine his whereabouts,” an unnamed U.S. official told The Washington Post.

Do you know a good way to have determined Jihad’s whereabouts? By keeping him in Gitmo.

In December 2014, Dhiab and five other prisoners of Middle Eastern and North African origin were transferred to Uruguay, as part of a deal between the U.S. and Uruguay to resettle detainees seen as posing little threat.

But, surprisingly, a top terrorist had little interest in being resettled in Uruguay.

Categories: GITMO, Islamic terrorism, Obama and GITMO, Obama and Islamic terrorism
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Humor | Obama touts legacy of renaming wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would close Gitmo

June 5, 2016

Obama touts legacy of renaming wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would close Gitmo, Duffel Blog, , June 5, 2016

Obama soldier

WASHINGTON — President Obama sought on Monday to reshape the controversy over the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fully operational Guantanamo Bay prison by asking the American people to remember that he tried really hard.

Speaking at an event for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Obama strongly touted his legacy as the only president to semantically end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reminded the American people that he has been talking serious about closing Guantanamo Bay, “since like, the 2008 election.”

When pressed to explain the current military operations against ISIS in Iraq and a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama responded with “I said I ended the wars didn’t I? There’s no more war. What’s going on now is more like ‘kinetic foreign advising.’”

Like all presidents before him, Obama has sought to brand and message his legacy as one in line with the sweeping campaign promises he staked his candidacy on.

The Obama administration’s reluctance to call the actions in Iraq against ISIS which have claimed the lives of three US serviceman “combat operations” has angered veterans and the other dozen or so Americans who pay attention to the nation’s continuing wars.

“The third time we took indirect and sniper fire, I asked my squad leader if we’d get our CIBs (Combat Infantryman Badge) yet,” said Army Pvt. Anthony Dunn, “but he just shrugged and said the commander was going to see if we could get a pizza night in the DFAC.”

The establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in January 2002 has long been a political lightning rod, made especially so following then-Sen. Obama’s pledge to close the facility beginning with his campaigning in 2007.

“Hey, this stuff is hard,” Obama said. “But every prisoner we detain on the battlefield deserves a fair trial. Just not the ones on the wrong end of a Predator drone.”

“I mean, am I right or am I right?” the president added, after high-fiving Vice President Joe Biden.

 

Categories: GITMO, Humor, Obama and US military
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Dishonoring Veterans, Honoring Terrorists

May 30, 2016

Dishonoring Veterans, Honoring Terrorists, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 30, 2016

president-obama-hiroshima-speech-reuters

The men and women who die fighting for the cause of freedom are not accorded a fraction of the tender affection from the press that it lavishes on a single imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. We live today in an America in which the butchers of the Jihad in Guantanamo Bay receive better medical care than veterans waiting endlessly at the VA. While Obama cut off hot meals for Marines in Afghanistan, Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay were enjoying lemon baked fish, honey glazed chicken, lyonnaise rice, tandoori chicken breast, okra, hummus, dates, honey and seasoned lentils.

[O]ur enemies today are as likely to come from within as without. We are in the midst of a quiet civil war and our veterans have become its first casualties. The heroes of today’s ruling class are racist rabble-rousers who tear down the flag for which so many of our soldiers died and replace it with their own militant banners of identity politics. The privileged leftist activists who once chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NFL is gonna win”, who even attempted to murder soldiers to aid the enemy, are in charge of the country, while Vietnam veterans sleep on the streets and groan in prisons.

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On Memorial Day, the flowers bloom. A dozen towns in a dozen states all claim that it began there when after the long weary struggle of the Civil War, the mothers and sisters of the lost and the fallen brought fresh cut flowers to bring a touch of life to the dead men entombed in the cold, gray stone.

“From the silence of sorrowful hours, The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe,” reads the famous Francis Miles Finch poem which helped popularize the practice.

Today the wars are no longer fraternal. The First World War is the last war that had anything brotherly in it. It was a war where soldiers from both sides could observe a Christmas truce and hurl nothing deadlier than snowballs at each other. The end of that terrible war on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” became Armistice Day and then, when the “war to end all wars” did not end them, but instead gave way to wars fought against terrible evils, Nazism, Communism, Islam, it became Veteran’s Day to remember those who would go on sacrificing in this eternal struggle against evil.

But while wars are no longer fraternal, the flowers are laid now on the graves of foes, not friends.

The men and women who die fighting for the cause of freedom are not accorded a fraction of the tender affection from the press that it lavishes on a single imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. We live today in an America in which the butchers of the Jihad in Guantanamo Bay receive better medical care than veterans waiting endlessly at the VA. While Obama cut off hot meals for Marines in Afghanistan, Islamic terrorists in Guantanamo Bay were enjoying lemon baked fish, honey glazed chicken, lyonnaise rice, tandoori chicken breast, okra, hummus, dates, honey and seasoned lentils.

While veterans died at the VA, the men they had fought and helped capture were gifted with a $750,000 soccer field. This treatment is an obscene echo of the days of segregation when German POWs were allowed to sit inside at eateries while the African-American soldiers who guarded them had to wait outside. This segregation no longer occurs by race, but by patriotism and creed.

Obama denies that Islamic terrorism exists and suppresses any training materials about the role of Islam in Islamic terrorism while his administration warns of domestic terror threats from veterans. Muslim migrants from Syria receive lavish social benefits while health care for veterans is slashed. The Muslim migrants, many of whom support Islamic terrorists, benefit from job programs while veterans head for the unemployment line. This hatefully discriminatory attitude has become pervasive on the left.

Hollywood bends over backward to avoid accurately portraying Muslim terrorists, but depicts returning veterans as unstable killers and ticking time bombs. The media gushes over each petty Islamophobia grievance, like Tahera Ahmad, who claimed that she didn’t receive a Diet Coke can on a plane only because she was Muslim, while sweeping the sweeping the thousand veterans who died because of the VA scandal under the progressive prayer rug. A Muslim Diet Coke matters more than a thousand dead veterans.

When Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was slow to release Islamic Jihadists from Guantanamo Bay, Obama summoned him and personally chewed him out over the delays for his beloved terrorists. His predecessor, Secretary of Defense Hagel, said, “I’d get the hell beat out of me all the time on this at the White House.”

Does anyone imagine that Obama summoned the VA secretary to yell at him over the treatment of veterans? Instead he initially backed former VA Secretary Shinseki. And it’s doubtful that current VA Secretary Bob McDonald will be getting personally yelled at by Obama for comparing wait lines at the VA to Disneyland.

33% of veterans who have served since September 11 suffer from a disability. Their unemployment rates are higher and both poverty rates and food stamp use continue to rise. Behind these tragic facts is the tragic truth that we have forgotten how to honor our veterans. Worse still, the country’s leaders go out of their way to actively diminish the respect due to their courage and sacrifices.

On his visit to Vietnam, Obama referenced veterans only to praise John Kerry while insisting that “the courage to make peace” is more important than the courage “to fight.” The old-fashioned kind of veteran who fought in Vietnam, who earned his Purple Heart honestly and came home wounded in body and spirit, who is not interested in pretending that the Communist death squads he fought deserve his tribute is, according to Obama, lacking in courage. True courage is appeasement while the courage that stopped Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is truly something closer to cowardice.

In his apology speech at Hiroshima, Obama cynically equated American and Japanese soldiers, as he had both sides in Vietnam, dismissing World War II as being fought out of a “base instinct for domination or conquest.” This is how the left sees war and soldiers. There are no good wars. Therefore the only good veterans are the ones who transcend it by recognizing that they made a mistake by fighting. That war is a misunderstanding to be resolved by the truly courageous diplomacy of men like John Kerry.

Is it any wonder that an administration which views the military as an evil to be abolished, which sees the war against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany not as proof of our moral convictions, but as an outgrowth of our ancestors “having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood, used these tools not just for hunting, but against their own kind,” has such contempt and hostility for veterans?

And is it any wonder that this contempt trickles through the institutions of the left, from entertainment to academia, and that in the shadow of these institutions, the honor due to the men who fought for our freedom, those still living and the dead, from the birth of our nation to its present crisis, is lacking?

Is it any wonder that veterans go hungry while lavish feasts are thrown in the institutions of government? Once we remembered that our freedoms come from the willingness to fight for them. Not with campus activism or empty words, but on the battlefield against those totalitarian enemies, whether they wear the death’s head, the red star or the crescent, which come to deprive us of them.

But our enemies today are as likely to come from within as without. We are in the midst of a quiet civil war and our veterans have become its first casualties. The heroes of today’s ruling class are racist rabble-rousers who tear down the flag for which so many of our soldiers died and replace it with their own militant banners of identity politics. The privileged leftist activists who once chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NFL is gonna win”, who even attempted to murder soldiers to aid the enemy, are in charge of the country, while Vietnam veterans sleep on the streets and groan in prisons.

Obama’s disrespect for veterans and the military is only a symptom of a deeper rot. Once again a civil war is underway between those of us who love this Union and those who seek to divide it. It is a conflict fought with words and laws, rather than bullets, but it has its casualties who are all around us. It is not only the veterans who have died at the VA who are its victims, but those who have long slept under green grass and gray stone, whose graves wait to be decorated, whose courage waits to be remembered and whose cause waits to be fought once again.

Categories: GITMO, Hiroshima visit, Hypocrisy, Islamic terrorism, Memorial Day, National honor, Obama and Jihad, Obama and morality, Obama and US military, Obama's America, Veterans
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Analysis: Iran has supported the Taliban’s insurgency since late 2001

May 29, 2016

Analysis: Iran has supported the Taliban’s insurgency since late 2001, Long War Journal, , May 29, 2016

Joint Task Force – Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention facility, deemed Khairkhwa a “high” risk to the U.S. and its allies, in part, because of his dealings with the Iranians. Despite JTF-GTMO’s assessment, and the DC court’s rejection of his habeas petition, Khairkhwa was transferred to Qatar in 2014. He was one of the five Taliban commanders exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

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On May 21, an American drone strike ended Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour’s reign as the Taliban’s leader. As The Wall Street Journal first reported, US intelligence officials tracked Mansour to Iran, where he was visiting his family, and then targeted his car as he crossed back over the border into Pakistan. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, quickly denied this version of events, claiming that his country “welcomes any measure in line with bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan.”

However, Zabihullah Mujahid (the Taliban’s chief spokesman) has conceded that Mansour was indeed inside Iran. Dawn quotes Mujahid as saying the Taliban chief crossed the border because of “ongoing battle obligations,” adding that Mansour made multiple “unofficial trips” to Iran.

While many of the details concerning Mansour’s travels remain murky, his presence inside Iranian territory shortly before his death isn’t surprising. Iran has a long history of backing the Taliban’s insurgency against US and allied forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, the relationship between the two former foes is one of the most misunderstood and oft-overlooked aspects of the 9/11 wars.

Iran and the Taliban nearly went to war in 1998 after senior Taliban commanders slaughtered Iranian diplomats and other Shiites in Mazar-i-Sharif. But by late 2001, as the Americans prepared to topple the Taliban’s government, the situation changed dramatically. Outwardly, the Iranians acted as if they just wanted to help rebuild Afghanistan. Western diplomats have praised Iran for its role in the Dec. 2001 meetings in Bonn, Germany, where a post-Taliban government was established. But there is much more to this story. Just before the American-led invasion of Afghanistan two months earlier, the Iranians cut a secret deal with Mullah Omar’s representatives.

One of Omar’s most trusted lieutenants, Khairullah Khairkhwa, helped broker an agreement with the Iranians in Oct. 2001. We know this because Khairkhwa was captured in Pakistan in early 2002, transferred to Guantanamo and then told American officials all about it.

A district court in Washington, DC denied Khairkhwa’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 2011. The court found that Khairkhwa “repeatedly admitted” that after the 9/11 attacks “he served as a member of a Taliban envoy that met clandestinely with senior Iranian officials to discuss Iran’s offer to provide the Taliban with weapons and other military support in anticipation of imminent hostilities with U.S. coalition forces.” [SeeLWJ report, DC district court denies former Taliban governor’s habeas petition.]

According to the court, the Iranians told Khairkhwa and his Taliban delegation that they could provide shoulder-fired missiles (SAM-7’s) and “track all movements by the United States.” In addition, the Iranians “offered to open their border to Arabs entering Afghanistan.” Iran did just that, allowing some al Qaeda members and others to escape the American onslaught.

Joint Task Force – Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the detention facility, deemed Khairkhwa a “high” risk to the U.S. and its allies, in part, because of his dealings with the Iranians. Despite JTF-GTMO’s assessment, and the DC court’s rejection of his habeas petition, Khairkhwa was transferred to Qatar in 2014. He was one of the five Taliban commanders exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

During the twelve years Khairkhwa was detained in Cuba, Iran continued to collude with the Taliban. The Defense, State and Treasury Departments have all documented the relationship.

In its “Annual Report on [the] Military Power of Iran,” which was delivered to Congress in 2012, the Department of Defense explained that Iran’s support for the Taliban was part of its “grand strategy” to challenge “US influence.” Although there was “historic enmity” between the two sides, the Pentagon said, support for the Taliban “complements Iran’s strategy of backing many groups to maximize its influence while also undermining US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) objectives by fomenting violence.”

“Since 2006,” the State Department noted in its Country Reports on Terrorism for 2012, “Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives.” In 2012, the Iranians “shipped a large number of weapons to Kandahar, Afghanistan, aiming to increase its influence in this key province.”

Foggy Bottom added that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force (IRGC-QF) “trained Taliban elements on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets.”

A series of Treasury Department terror designations illuminate the relationship between the IRGC-QF and the Taliban.

In August 2010, Treasury designated two IRGC-QF commanders as terrorists for providing “financial and material support to the Taliban.” A special unit in the IRGC-QF known as the Ansar Corps is responsible for orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan. Nearly two years later, in Mar. 2012, Treasury identified IRGC-QF General Gholamreza Baghbani as a narcotics trafficker. At the time, Baghbani was based in Zahedan, Iran, which is near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. From this strategically situated crossroads, Baghbani allegedly oversaw an operation that “moved weapons to the Taliban,” while smuggling “heroin precursor chemicals through the Iranian border” and facilitating “shipments of opium into Iran.” This guns-for-drugs scheme directly fueled the Taliban’s insurgency, according to Treasury.

Treasury wasn’t finished. In February 2014, three other IRGC-QF officials and one of their associates were designated for plotting terrorist acts in Afghanistan and also using “intelligence operations as tools of influence against” the Afghan government. Iran’s duplicitous scheme meant that the IRGC-QF was “currying favor” with some Afghan politicians while targeting other officials for assassination.

In the weeks immediately following 9/11, the Iranian regime and the Taliban met in the shadows. In the 14-plus years since, their relationship has become overt. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2012 that the Taliban has set up an office in Zahedan, which is also a well-known al Qaeda hub. Taliban officials have repeatedly and openly attended meetings in Tehran. And other sources confirm that Iran has often provided the Taliban with arms and training.

Contrary to what Ansari claims, the Iranians don’t want “peace and stability” in Afghanistan – at least not at the expense of achieving their other objectives. They want to force the US out and expand their influence. Given Iran’s enduring partnership with the Taliban, forged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mansour’s trips to Iran may have been “unofficial,” but they are definitely unsurprising.

Categories: Bergdahl, GITMO, Iranian proxies, Obama and GITMO, Obama and Iran, Taliban
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