Step, stumble, bumble, set up, scam. I can’t quite come up with the right word.
This guy is quite smart, I’ll give him that. So if he’s doing this there is a further reason, and I don’t believe it is for the reason he says, because the other thing I think of our former community organizer is he is less than forthcoming in what he says.
“I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela – these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.” – Barack Obama May 18, 2008
So my first question is did he get a little head start in that department? In a World Tribune article dated today…….
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was working with Arab intermediaries to establish an unofficial dialogue with Al Qaida long before his election as the 44th U.S. president, according to a report in the upcoming weekly edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com.
My second question is this, did anyone in the US government, remember this is before the election, and before the inauguration, did anyone know of this and even more importantly did the President give him permission to pursue this line of communication?
My third question is this, what is the entire timeline, how far back does this idea and action line go, who was involved, and, in an odd twist, how does all of this lay out in comparison to oil prices? Pure, total complete speculation on my part, but if I could get the entire timeline and overlay oil prices, it might make for interesting conversation, or it might not. Like I said, he’s crafty, smart, street smart, a Chicago politician who learned his craft from some less than stellar Rotarians.
He had said he was going to close Gitmo, way back when. I figured he would, based on inexperience, based on emotion, based on a campaign promise.
Who is in Gitmo? These are what are considered the worst of the worst, captured in battle.
According to the Geneva Conventions
Article 4 defines prisoners of war to include:
- 4.1.1 Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict and members of militias of such armed forces
- 4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:
- that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
- that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
- that of carrying arms openly;
- that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
- 4.1.3 Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
- 4.1.4 Civilians who have non-combat support roles with the military and who carry a valid identity card issued by the military they support.
- 4.1.5 Merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
- 4.1.6 Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
This is not the crew assembled in the tropical paradise of Gitmo. The people that our troops have had to fight and have killed and captured, do not wear uniforms or insignias, they are happy to hide in a crowd, in a mosque, in a school. They have no ID, they normally will not carry arms out in the open, they fight for no country or flag, and they certainly do not respect the laws and customs of war (Berg and Pearl come to mind). These are not prisoners of war by the definition and as such we as their captors are not REQUIRED to give them the treatment as outlined under the Conventions, but we have, and then some.
These are guys that in some cases took up arms because if they didn’t Al Qaida would have killed them or their families. Some of these are hard core though, they want to kill more infidels, they are proud of what they have done, while others play the system, lawsuits, act nice, pretend to be an accidental capture, polite in many cases educated in this country, they speak English quite well, and in some cases the can talk themselves out.
Michelle Malkin has a great post on “More Gitmo catch-and-release” in her January 25 post “Rehab” Gitmo recidivists thumb their noses in new video, it seems that 11% or more of those already released are back in the battlefield, and that the two main characters in these AQ videos are moving up in the Yemeni AQ ranks, and are thought to have had a role in the deadly attack on the American Embassy in September.
Both of these current Yemeni terrorist were passed through the Saudi Arabian rehabilitation program for jihadists, stop laughing I didn’t make that up. It would seem that the 12 step plan should be changed just a bit, maybe that 12th step should be from the top of a tall building?
In the video released Said Ali al-Shihri, 35, former Gitmo detainee says:
“by God, our imprisonment only increased our perseverance in the principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for.”
Sounds like a confession to me, something like yup we got busted before, guilty as hell, free as a bird…. I don’t think he’ll agree with Bill Ayers that America is great, but then again they could trade bomb recipes.
So we are going to close Gitmo, the very secure, not on our turf prison and do what with these prisoners? Bring them here? Stupid.
They are there because 1. It is secure, 2. Not on our homeland so if it is attacked in an attempt to make a statement, or release some of the prisoners, our citizens are not at risk. 3. If they are brought here and placed in State or Federal correctional institutions, you have now set it up where they have the full US legal system to play with.
In William Haynes article “Enemy Combatants”, he goes through the entire process, preamble, defines the term, outlines the decision process and responsibility, detainee rights and term of detention. If you are unfamiliar with Gitmo, the why, where, who and all that, look at his article.
Nearly six decades ago this very topic came up before the Supreme Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager, it is entirely impossible for the military to meet the demands of civil court proceedings by prisoner such as these.
such trials would hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy. They would diminish the prestige of our commanders, not only with enemies but with wavering neutrals. It would be difficult to devise more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. Nor is it unlikely that the result of such enemy litigiousness would be conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States.
In their ruling the Supreme Court justices noted (emphasis added and footnotes removed):
- …Modern American law has come a long way since the time when outbreak of war made every enemy national an outlaw, subject to both public and private slaughter, cruelty and plunder. But even by the most magnanimous view, our law does not abolish inherent distinctions recognized throughout the civilized world between citizens and aliens, nor between aliens of friendly and of enemy allegiance, nor between resident enemy aliens who have submitted themselves to our laws and non-resident enemy aliens who at all times have remained with, and adhered to, enemy governments. …
- But, in extending constitutional protections beyond the citizenry, the Court has been at pains to point out that it was the alien's presence within its territorial jurisdiction that gave the Judiciary power to act. …
- If this [Fifth] Amendment invests enemy aliens in unlawful hostile action against us with immunity from military trial, it puts them in a more protected position than our own soldiers. …
- We hold that the Constitution does not confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United States.
- …It is not for us to say whether these prisoners were or were not guilty of a war crime, or whether if we were to retry the case we would agree to the findings of fact or the application of the laws of war made by the Military Commission. The petition shows that these prisoners were formally accused of violating the laws of war and fully informed of particulars of these charges.
In Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court went 180 on the Eisentrager case. In the majority opinion Justice John Paul Stevens basically has said that…
“Because the writ of habeas corpus does not act upon the prisoner who seeks relief, but upon the person who holds him what is alleged to be unlawful custody, a district court acts within [its] respective jurisdiction within the meaning [of the law] as long as the custodian can be reached by service of process.”
So because of this boneheaded decision, any prisoner of war, anywhere on the planet can petition the courts, I’m sorry but this to me is pure manure, it violates the Constitution, it violates clear precedent already written, and most of all it violates all intents of the laws of our Nation as well as the Geneva Conventions
So the question still remains, what do we do with these guys? Hand them parachutes with no rip cords and drop them off at home? Send them to Saudi Arabia for reprogramming? Let John Murtha build another pork barrel project High Securtiy Prison in his district like he wants to?
First we need to correct the last ruling by the Supremes. Second, foreign prisoners of conflict should NEVER be brought to our shores, because then you do have the potential to open the legal system to them and then reduce the governments ability to prosecute the war.
President Obama should know all of this, so either he is trying to make the waging of war that much more difficult, or he doesn’t plan on fighting (that’s what I think), or he is just totally clueless and this is a blunder of the first degree.
President Obama wants to talk to Al Qaida, to Iran. I’m sorry in the past AQ has said we had three options with no negotiations possible, this is from before GW Bush, they were attacking us during the Clinton years as well.
- You kill us
- We kill you
- We as Americans submit and live life under their laws of Sharia
Negotiate? Talk to? Listen to? This is the paths that Carter and Clinton used and where did we get?
The captives at Gitmo will more than likely either be released, or moved stateside and be prosecuted in a civil trial. We have already seen a good number of these guys go back to the field and take up arms again.
I think that if our troops see that the system as it stands is flawed, i.e. civil trials for prisoners of war, leading to release and reintroduction to the theater, I think the troops just might take up the legal cause, after all if the Supreme Court can rewrite laws….. You have the right to remain silent……………………………….
