Mideast Catch-And-Release

IBD ^ | May 29, 2008

[Kaslin]

War On Terror: Why are we catching terrorists, only to watch our Muslim-nation allies release them? The leniency looks a lot like betrayal, perhaps even state sponsorship of terrorism.

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After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush vowed to hold accountable any state that gives aid and comfort to terrorists. He also said not a single terrorist in the world would rest easy, that they'd be hunted down like the animals they are.

"Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize," he said, "no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep."

Seven years later, the terrorists are finding a lot of governments in the Middle East and South Asia to hide behind — governments we too readily assume are "allies" in the war on Islamic terror.

And today a lot of anti-American terrorists are sleeping peacefully, outside the bars of justice and under the aegis of these two-faced governments we call "friends." Here's a rundown:

Pakistan: Islamabad last month freed a top Taliban leader who was caught fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 9/11.

The release of Maulana Sufi Muhammad was supposed to help buy peace among militants in the lawless tribal area. But a similar 2006 amnesty deal involving hundreds of imprisoned terrorists from the region only emboldened their attacks on U.S. troops.

In December, Pakistani authorities let a major al-Qaida terrorist wanted by British police in connection with the transatlantic sky terror plot conveniently escape just weeks before he was scheduled to be extradited to Britain for questioning and prosecution in the conspiracy to blow up 10 airliners over U.S. cities.

Rashid Rauf, who fled while attending a mosque, remains at large.

[omega4412]

But haven’t we secretly implanted tracking chips in all the terrorists freed?

[Joe Boucher]

“After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush vowed to hold accountable any state that gives aid and comfort to terrorists”?
Unless of course you are Saudi Arabia (the real sponsor of terrorism). Or a very large exporter of Oil (in which case we’ll let you kill our soldiers.

[mikey_hates_everything]

Why are we catching them? Why aren't we just killing them? It's what they want anyway.