U.S. President Barack Obama signs an executive order regarding the closure of the military prison at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on his second official day as president at the White House in Washington in this January 22, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Larry Downing/Files
Reuters: Special Report: Pentagon thwarts Obama's effort to close Guantanamo
In September, U.S. State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realizing President Barack Obama's goal of closing the prison before he leaves office.
The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah's medical records, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 74 pounds from 148, and the foreign officials wanted to make sure they could care for him.
For the next six weeks, Pentagon officials declined to release the records, citing patient privacy concerns, according to the U.S. officials. The delegation, from a country administration officials declined to identify, canceled its visit. After the administration promised to deliver the records, the delegation traveled to Guantanamo and appeared set to take the prisoner off U.S. hands, the officials said. The Pentagon again withheld Ba Odah's full medical file.
Update: Report: Obama scolded Pentagon chief on Guantanamo transfers (The Hill).
WNU Editor: Guantanamo prison is run by the U.S. military .... and President Obama is the Commander in Chief. He can do what he wants and/or orders .... and I am sure that if he felt that he was being blocked .... transfers/firings/dismissals will quickly follow suit. In fact .... if he was serious about closing Guantanamo he could have done it in 2009 - 2010 when the Democrats had super-majorities in both Houses, But he did not .... due to his own Party's pressure and worries on closing the facility. But the part of this Reuter's report that I found interesting was this ....
.... The Bush administration faced no political opposition on transfers and was able to move 532 detainees out of Guantanamo over six years, 35 percent of whom returned to the fight, according to U.S. intelligence estimates. The Obama administration has been able to transfer 131 detainees over seven years, 10 percent of whom have returned to the fight.
It looks like the Bush administration were sloppy in determininig who was going to return to the fight (or not).
1) Bush was not under pressure?
ReplyDeleteI remember the statistical game of (not that many years ago) how many detainees had returned to the battle field and that we should release more. At the time it was between 15% and 20%. There was static from the Left the whole time. The NYT once or twice had a graphic where they looked at the percentages.
2) I think Obama should be brought up on homicide charges or impeached IF detainees are brought to a U.S. prison AND a terrorists attack an American community to free them AND there is a large loss of life.
3) Is Obama's pledge to close Guantanamo is a talking point and red meat thrown to his base or he is just reckless? WNU points out that Obama had the power to close Guantanamo.
Most of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent, which is why they've never been tried. After five or six years these people, many turned in by bounty hunters who simply needed bodies, being treated like dogs and worse (dogs aren't tortured) they "return to the fight?" Are they expected to forgive and forget after this treatment? Would any of us just say forget it? Or pick up a gun.
ReplyDeleteMy 1st thought about learning the Koran or Arabic would be in a civilized place not a country wracked by civil war.
ReplyDeleteWould a person go to Yemen or Saudi Arabia to learn Arabic?
Would they go to Morocco of Algeria?
Would they go to Iraq or the UAE?
Why would the Uighurs go to Afghanistan or the Pakistan tribal areas instead Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or Kazakhistan?
To get to Afghanistan from Western China who almost have to go through Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. Why not stop instead of going to a poorer country?
It just makes no sense. It is almost like person of means going to Rio de Janeiro and hanging out in the favelas 24/7 until something happened to you instead sticking to Ipanema or Copacabana.
Anzino,
DeleteThe attraction of going to Yemen, for example, to study Arabic and the Quran, is first off the cost, according to one American woman who blogged her experience, $350 a year paid for a house, a cook and a maid, food, transportation and school costs, and second off, the "scholarships", Saudi Arabia paid all her costs to move to Yemen and study Arabic and the Quran at one of the hundreds of Madrassa's they had flooded Yemen with.
That was a big root cause of the Houthi revolt.
The Saudi's/ISI did the same thing with the Deobandi Madrassa's in Pakistan and the NWTA.
Central Aska still seems a safer bet than the NWTA.
ReplyDeleteNot many Madrassa's in Central Asia, you know, after that whole Chechen thing, the Government's cracked down pretty hard.
Deletehttp://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0Q21SN20150728
don bacon- "Are they expected to forgive and forget after this treatment? Would any of us just say forget it? Or pick up a gun."
ReplyDeletei guess not. we americans are just so mean for having a prisoner of war camp whilst fighting a global war on terror. tisk tisk, hmmm maybe it would be so much more civilized to instead try them in our courts under our laws and rights. its cool cause sharia would be way more painful. they deserve to be protected by a u.s. constitution that, according to a pew research poll, almost 860 million out of the 1.6 billion muslims on earth absolutely reject.
lol
Gitmo is not a Prisoner of War Camp,
DeleteIt's an illegal under International Law, and US Law, ( which is why it's not on US soil), detainment and torture facility.
News story is July 15th.
ReplyDeleteWas there a crack down going on from 2001 to 2003 when these guys were captured?
If these guys want to learn Islam better any Iman will do unless they want a deobandi one that supports jihad. I can see why they would not top in Central Asia.
"Was there a crack down going on from 2001 to 2003 when these guys were captured?"
ReplyDeleteThere was a CIA bounty system put in place where anybody turned over to the US Forces as a "jihadi" was paid $50,000, and the "hotlist" of the top identified Jihadi's , ( identified top level Talib's and al Quida) were worth between $500,000 to $20,000,000 USD.
http://www.amnesty.org.au/hrs/comments/bounties_paid_for_terror_suspects/
The program was ended in 2006 because of the massive levels of fraud, fakery, false arrests and criminal actions, made the entire program counter productive, and the "bounty" program restricted to known, identified targets.
Hey Jay,
ReplyDeleteI am not shedding any tears over Uighurs picked up in Afghanistan or the Tribal territories.
Not happening.
Well then, think of the millions of dollars, spent per innocent detainee, detaining them , torturing them, getting false confessions,
DeleteThen the millions of dollars and hundreds of lives spent chasing the so called "Intel" from those case confessions,
And the thousands of Afghans, Ugiher's, Tajik's and Tribals who joined the Taliban, Hebzi, Al Quida and ISIS as a result of all those bomb strikes, drone strikes, murders and raids based on all that false Intel targetting innocent people.
Don't worry Anzino, I'm sure Iraq and Afghanistan will pay for them selves any day now, all you have to do is waste more money and lives on the projects.
ReplyDeleteJay,
ReplyDeleteI see you are holed up n the mountains.
Well, that's one way to look at it, although they arn't mountains, they are just hills. If you can walk up them and they have rounded tops, they are just hills. If you have to climb them and they include alpine areas and snowfields, tarns and glaciers, then they are mountains.
DeleteThe other way of looking at it, is I live on a farm, 12 miles out of town, that's "off grid" because the "grid" is 10 miles away, and connecting to it would have cost me well over $120,000, but solar and wind only cost $42,000.
0% "survivalist", about 40% Hippie.
Jay ... my place up north in the Laurentians is also about 12 km away from the nearest town .... sighhh .... being away from people has its advantages.
ReplyDeleteWNU Editor,
DeleteHere in Kamloops, most people live "in" the "hills". It's a junction of two rivers, and a lake, in the geological remains of a prehistoric "super lake".
East/West and North/South there is the narrow River bottom, about 3 km wide, except for the delta at the junction down to the lake, which at it's widest, is maybe 10 km wide, so starting in the 70's, the suburbs were built up on the benchlands above the valley, then up into the hills.
In the 1900's, the area I live in was "open range", grazed by the big ranches, but in the 1920's it was broken up into 160 acre homesteads, which the ranchers didn't appreciate.
A drought hit during the Depression, and that, allied with "dirty tricks" saw the homesteads fall one by one to the Ranchers, until by the '50's, few were left.
But you are right, it's nice to have 40 to 160 acres between you and your nearest neighbor.