Osama Bin Laden's Death a Victory for Joint Task Force-Guantanamo
As Obama administration officials described it, the real breakthrough came when they finally figured out the name and location of Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, whom the Qaeda chief appeared to rely on to maintain contacts with the outside world.
Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
American intelligence officials said Sunday night that they finally learned the courier’s real name four years ago, but that it took another two years for them to learn the general region where he operated. (As reported by the NYTimes)
The press has been quick to highlight every reported instance of abuse (most of them fiction) and every case where an innocent was detained (comparatively few). At the same time, our leading press organizations, including the New York Times, have either ignored or downplayed the value of the intelligence learned through interrogations at Guantanamo. Yet, it was that intelligence that ultimately led to the death of Osama bin Laden.
Yes, it took time and additional intelligence to piece together the whole picture. But the initial lead came from detainees at Guantanamo – and what a lead it was!
Read the rest here. (via The Weekly Standard)
Previously:
INTERVIEW: HARD NUMBERS ON GITMO FROM JAG LAWYER WHO ACTUALLY PROSECUTED THE TRIALS
More on Guanatanamo
Raid that got bin Laden was culmination of years of work, sr. admin officials say
Apparently, the key to the whole operation was finding and tracking Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, a process that took years — and involved info given by Guantanamo detainees.
Also: U.S. officials confirmed that Pakistan was not, in fact, informed before the operation.
If the photo of nonplussed pedestrians seen here is any indication, Tina Teens was right. No one really cares.
An allegory for the Obama administration’s Hope and Change™ foreign policy approach to dealing with rogue elements?
Go with me on this:
As seen above, Shepard Fairey’s new mural on Deitch Wall at Houston Street in New York City, erected to drum up business for Fairey’s line of posters and t-shirts at his pop-up store around the corner, was recently bombed with graffiti.
For reference, Fairey is the artist behind the famed Obama “Hope” poster made iconic during the 2008 Presidential campaign:
Despite Fairey’s fame and reverence and despite signs put up asking not to spray graffiti on the mural, some rogue elements, in this case graffiti artists, tagged it anyway. Not at all a comment on Fairey’s work, but what a pointed analogy to the response Obama’s soft, “outstretched hand,” charm offensive approach to dealing with the likes of North Korea and Iran during the first year and a half of his administration. In what was hailed by the high-minded as so refreshing and evolved compared to Bush’s “big stick” approach has after sixteen months been shown to be naive, at best, an abject failure, at worst (though we may not have witnessed the true worst consequences yet). It’s almost comical if the topic weren’t the long-term stability of the free world.
Relying essentially on hope to deter Kim Jong Il and the mullahs in Iran from asserting themselves by pursuing nuclear arms is about as responsible and watertight a strategy as BP drilling an oil well a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico without much, if any, of a contingency plan. And we know how angry Obama is about what’s taking place in the Gulf, rightfully so.
Well, Mr. President, just as your patience has worn thin regarding the lack of progress in the Gulf, so, too, has that of many Americans with the way you’ve handled what is a far more existential issue. Hope is not an acceptable strategy. You’ve treated these rogue players like misbehaving children in need of a time out. And like that child wanting to see just how far they can push before being rebuked, they’ve responded continuously by flipping the bird.
You believed you could “just talk” them into capitulating action. Your high-mindedness led you to think they would meet you halfway on the moral high road, that they simply disliked your predecessor and their response to the West would shift on January 21. You thought you could deal rationally with irrational actors. You thought the “power of your own eloquence” would be enough to bring them over to your side.
Newsflash: you were wrong.
North Korea, somewhat hilariously, launched a test missile the same day you gave a speech to the UN on denuclearization.
And nearly six months after your stated “we’re-super-duper-serial-this-time-you-better-listen-to-us-or-else” line in the sand (and nearly a year since issuing the warning), Iran has done nothing but press forward on their nuclear plans.
I fear you are a laughingstock in certain circles around the world and that’s not how the Leader of the Free World should be regarded.
It’s okay to say it: there are some bad actors in the universe. And they’re usually not quiet about letting you know their sinister intentions. Dennis Miller sardonically opined recently that when you’re at a cocktail party and you start talking to a guy at the punch bowl and the first words out of his mouth are “I’m here to usher in the new caliphate,” you walk away, don’t extend your hand.
Mr. President, it’s not cute anymore. Again, the caption above to the photo of New Yorkers walking blithely by Fairey’s new mural encapsulates perfectly what most Americans are starting to, if they didn’t already, believe about your continued failed policy and, if your appointed Secretary of Defense is to be believed, lack of contingency. Days after an attempted bombing in Times Square (of the non-graffiti variety, and capping a noted increase in the number of such incidents, successfully executed or not since you’ve taken office), you might forgive residents and visitors of this city and the country as a whole for being a little angry, if not just dismissive of your strategy that has earned you zero ground with and only seems to have galvanized our enemies.
Now, it’s not too late to step back from this stance, and please don’t let pride be what keeps you from doing so. A damaged ego is far less important than the safety of the world’s citizens in the grand scheme of things. Far more will label you pragmatic than will accuse you of being a flip-flopper.
Mr. President, I’m actually encouraged by much of your foreign policy. I don’t know what Faisal Shahzad said to authorities, but it seems to have stirred up a sense of urgency within your administration. You started saying “terrorism” again…vs. “man-made disasters.” You’ve essentially kept to the Bush playbook down to the letter in Iraq. You’ve put a renewed focus on Afghanistan. Guantanamo is still open, as it should be. Just last Sunday, AG Holder even suggested a need to revise the use of Miranda rights when dealing with hostile actors, even when on U.S. soil. But for your brush-ups with Israel, one might mistake your stance on these issues with your predecessor’s.
Concerning the “rogue-est” of the rogues, however, perhaps it’s time you were as angry about threats to your own citizens and allies as you are about threats to crawfish.
Haiti earthquake gives Guantanamo new mission
By BEN FOX
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 21, 2010; 4:21 PM
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The Haiti earthquake is giving the American base at Guantanamo Bay a new mission: supplying aid to the devastated island nation and potentially detaining thousands of Haitian migrants captured at sea.
President Barack Obama’s deadline for closing the base prison expires Friday with no new date in sight, but a huge effort to provide earthquake aid is just getting started.
The U.S. has designated Guantanamo, less than 200 miles from Haiti, as the hub of the aid operation. Dozens of helicopters and planes take off daily to ferry supplies and personnel to the stricken country or to American ships off the coast.
Read the rest here.
First Scott Brown, now this?
It’s irony overload this week.
Report: 20 percent of released detainees returning to terrorism
Washington (CNN) — The number of former detainees once held by the U.S. in Cuba but now returning to terrorism activity has risen from 14 percent to 20 percent, according to a senior Defense official.
See also:
INTERVIEW: HARD NUMBERS ON GITMO FROM JAG LAWYER WHO ACTUALLY PROSECUTED THE TRIALS
“Jihadism’s list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative…”
Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions.
Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s No. 2, often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom — in 1492.
This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?
Ha.
Read the whole thing here.
See also:
INTERVIEW: HARD NUMBERS ON GITMO FROM JAG LAWYER WHO ACTUALLY PROSECUTED THE TRIALS
Bloomberg Says Security for NYC Terror Trial to Cost $216 Million
SO. MOTHERFUCKING. UNNECESSARY.
The attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab follows the alleged murders in Ft. Hood, Texas by Islamist-inspired Major Nidal Hasan in November. Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don’t seem to like Americans any better because we’re closing down Guantanamo.
The Terror This Time: Janet Napolitano says the system worked. No, we were brave and lucky.
From The WSJ today.
12.
Yeesh.
The Real Gitmo, today
Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and —- ahem —- someone who’s actually visited Guantánamo:
Gone, too, are the orange jumpsuits. They have been replaced by tan, white, and other neutral-colored clothing. During my multi-day tour of Guantánamo Bay, one official tells me that some journalists from Turkey wanted to take pictures of the detainees in their bright orange jumpsuits. When this official explained the detainees no longer wear those outfits, the Turkish reporters asked if a detainee could be dressed up in one for the photos as that is what their readers expect to see.
The story is emblematic of the disconnect between life at Guantánamo as it is today, and the Guantánamo of popular mythology. It is the latter that is the basis for the Obama administration’s decision to close the detention facilities there.
…
Guantánamo has simply never been a major part of al Qaeda’s recruitment strategy. But even if it were and we closed it, the terror masters would simply find the next pretext for justifying their acts. After all, if we are to close Guantánamo because al Qaeda objects to it, then why not abandon America’s entire foreign policy agenda?
…
The detainees have access to several satellite television channels and, as one DoD handout notes, a library consisting of “more than 14,000 books, magazines, and DVDs in 18 languages.
Ed. - Just like JetBlue!
…
Harry Potter is very popular, and with each new movie that comes out the detainees request more of J.K. Rowling’s books.
…
There we found that the detainees are offered six types of meals, totaling between 5,000 and 6,000 calories, daily. In their more candid moments, the detainees complain to camp personnel that it is difficult for them to claim they have been “tortured” when they have pot bellies.
…
And even Attorney General Eric Holder conceded after visiting the camps earlier this year that Guantánamo is “well-run” with no sign of detainee mistreatment.
…
The only way a detainee is interrogated is if he volunteers to be so. Surprisingly, between 80 and 90 detainees have volunteered to attend an interrogation during the past year alone.
…
Zak also recounts one story in which a detainee claimed that a military guard had urinated on his Koran. When Zak inspected the detainee’s copy, he noticed a perfect semi-circle imprinted on its pages. Zak quickly deduced that the detainee had pressed his bottle of Gatorade against his Koran’s pages to make it look as if it had been defiled. (Yes, the detainees get sports drinks.)
Some light reading for your holiday travels.
Full article here.
via The Weekly Standard
See also:
INTERVIEW: HARD NUMBERS ON GITMO FROM JAG LAWYER WHO ACTUALLY PROSECUTED THE TRIALS
