Posted on 01/28/2009 8:18:17 AM PST by presidio9
If the White House and Pentagon are going to make wise decisions about what to do with the Guantanamo Bay detainees they are going to need accurate information upon which to base their new policies.
Yet the single most cited “fact” last week about the terror suspects - that 61 of the men released from Gitmo have returned to fight against us - is simply not true. The number is far lower than that. And the longer “61” is used as a “talking point” by critics of the administration of President No. 44 the longer it will be before a viable solution is found.
The figure comes from a Pentagon press conference on January 13th - just a week before the end of the Bush Administration - in which a Defense Department spokesman declared: “The new numbers [for recidivists] are, we believe, 18 confirmed and 43 suspected of returning to the fight. So 61 in all former Guantanamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight.” Many news organizations did the math - 18 plus 43 equals 61 -but negligently failed to include the important qualifier “suspected” for the “43” figure. Moreover, there is reason to doubt the accuracy of even the “18” figure the Pentagon seems more sure about.
Republican lawmakers immediately jumped on this sloppy math/reporting to bolster their argument that the White House is jeopardizing national security even by thinking about releasing more Gitmo prisoners. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) repeated the number over and over again. “Do we bring them into our borders,” Rep. Boehner asked. “Do we release them back into the battlefield, like some 61 detainees that have been released we know are back on the battlefield? And do we release them to get back
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Confirmed = Killed and Identified. Please, let us confirm the other 43 and send their gonads to Mr. Cohen as proof.
What we need to do is have the military come out with a Global Warming Action Plan, and have all the Republicans support it, then CBS might actually look at the numbers there...
I don't recall the Viacommies at SeeBS News taking this same "fact breakdown" with regards to the forged National Guard Memos, showing viewers just how such a hoax could be perpertrated using MS Word.
Andrew Cohen works for Barack Obama. It's that simple.
I’ve seen a number of articles over the years with names etc of those encountered again in the battlefield.
“18 confirmed”
Sounds like it was much more than 18 to me.
How many of those “confirmed” blew themselves up in subsequent suicide attacks?
You do realize that the Bush Administration included complaining about America as "encountered again," right?
What moral high ground do we have, if we're trying to tell Iraq and Afghanistan that our American system is so great while we can't even be straight on things (not to mention following our own laws)?
Put a sock in it. you know what they mean.
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/01/nefa_foundation_video_of_forme.php
NEFA Foundation: Video of Former Gitmo Detainee-Turned-Al-Qaida Suicide Bomber in Iraq
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024535.php
Former Gitmo detainee now among top dogs in Al-Qaeda in Yemen
That’s 2. Only need to find 16 more.
Make you a deal CBS.com: I'll accept your qualified number if you'll stop blindly reporting "massaged numbers" when it benefits liberal pet projects like Gun Control & Abortion. OK?
I’ve got news for the left: All it takes is one.
Andrew Cohen sounds like an AlQaida sleeper agent.
Here in Northern Virginia we have a good track record about sending killers to the gurneys.
Uh... 18 confirmed, eh?
It took only 19 to kill 3000 civilians on 9/11/01.
Wonder if his workstation at CBS faces Mecca, for convenience? ;-)
And just what law has America broken vis a vis jihadists housed at Gitmo?
As an aside there is absolutely no space between you and the insane left on this statement.
Cohen states this as a fact but has no evidence whatever that it is the case. It is, in fact, an accusation. To liberals the two are the same thing when applied to conservatives.
"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for. And today here we are, O our Sheikh, Allah has blessed us with migration to the land of provision and jihad; the land of Yemen and faith, pledging allegiance to our brother, Abu Baseer Nasr al-Wahayshi, may Allah preserve him." Abu Sayfan, former guest at Club Gitmo
Perhaps you can rehab them Gondring. A man of great principle like yourself might even consider inviting a few into your home for intense rehab. What do you think?
If Obama wants the prisoners released, send them to live in the White House with him.
Read the SCOTUS decisions. Read the Geneva Conventions and (ICRC) Commentaries.
Why me? I'm not the idiot who decided against a war declaration. I'm not the idiot who decided our fight against them was within the Geneva Conventions, instead of declaring the GC to be inapplicable. I'm not the one trying to argue both sides.
In fact, why don't you explain why your heroes believe that waterboarding should be a legitimate way for lawful combatants to interrogate captured Americans? After all, if it's not "torture" or one of the prohibited things (including even just humiliating and degrading treatment), why can't it be used?
What are you implying...that we should have actually followed the Geneva Conventions to which we are a High Contracting Party?
>GASP!<
You must be a terrorist lover to suggest we do something like that!
</sarc>
What who means? The American people? Yes. They mean those who pick up weapons and fight against us ("again").
But Andrew Cohen is right that the government has been using a different definition and just implying the one above. The government's totals have included mere complainers against the US as "recidivists" in their inflated total.
Why must they exaggerate, if facts support them?
Clivk the link and read the whole column.
Those boys commited crimes in Virginia that are punishable by death.
With the federal government dropping the ball, it's best to jus' hand things over to the states.
One thing they know how to do here is EXECUTION!!
Complainer? You get mixed up with people like AlQaida you have no right to complain.
"Today, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war. The Chief Justice’s dissent, which I join, shows that the procedures prescribed by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act provide the essential protections that habeas corpus guarantees; there has thus been no suspension of the writ, and no basis exists for judicial intervention beyond what the Act allows. My problem with today’s opinion is more fundamental still: The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad; the Suspension Clause thus has no application, and the Court’s intervention in this military matter is entirely ultra vires." Justice Scalia in dissent joined by Roberts, Alito and Thomas.
You, of course side with the liberals. No big surprise there but I am surprised you don't have the courage of your convictions. There are a bunch of jihadists looking to be rehabbed and you won't take them in. Shame!
You are the one who wanted them released. I never argued that position. It’s your position that has them being released.
BTW, do all POW's get Habeas rights in America or just those who don't wear uniforms and kill women and children? IOW's just how principled are you?
And that POWs are handled differently, which is why it is important we don't play pussyfoot games like you want to do. The terrorists who were detained are ruthless. We shouldn't be treating them like they are some game. And the innocents we captured had to be released (the Pentagon released many thousands of detainees beyond these few at Gitmo--admitting that we had detained thousands and thousands who were not guilty).
I know that you want our troops to have to be very careful and capture only the guilty because then we can just treat them as guilty without trial, but I'd rather have a system where we detain more easily in the field, but release the innocent and hold the others in a just manner. I happen to care about the troops who are having to gather up these people, and then win the hearts of the innocent the next day while watching their backs the whole time.
And those troops should be free to go in and clear out villages that are deathpits of terrorist scum without having to act like the enemy is fighting lawfully. But thanks to W, that's not the case.
The first right they have is to get a competent tribunal for determination whether they are (a) POWs [Third Convention] or (b) civilians [Fourth Convention].
From there, you can determine their right to a trial before punishment. If you aren’t calling them POWs, then you have declared their right to habeas corpus. I’d rather they not have the Geneva Convention protection, but I’m not the president, and W took a different path.
You do realize that for every instance of clear ricidivism discovered its more likely than not that many times that were simply never discovered. That's the entire point here.
Does not apply to undeclared wars or to enemy combatants captured on the battlefield. Next?
Who are your heros asshat? Those that stand up for avowed enemies of America with the sole mission in life of bringing about another 9/11? Foreign enemies who are trying to kill innocent American citizens have no rights. It would be cause for celebration if we tortured ever last bit of information out of these animals and then put them out of their misery.
If we'd treated Nazi captives like our civil liberties fetishists propose to treat the terrorists, they would have established a Fourth Reich by now. And they were real combatants within the original meaning of the Geneva Convention as opposed to the obscene interpretation of self-hating liberals, under which non-uniformed non-state actors are given the sanction of regular soldiers.
The Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact, nor are those who seek to destroy it entitled to its protections.
Then why did the Bush Adminstration argue the exact opposite?
I must have missed it when he argued the EXACT opposite. Please explain.
Yes...President Bush’s lily-livered pusstfooting around, refusing to insist on a declaration of war from Congress, refusing to declare the conflict outside of the Geneva Conventions, refusing to back away from characterizing Islam as a “religion of peace,” etc., are ridiculous actions of an Administration that was dangerously weak, putting us in peril.
I can’t understand why so many FReepers want to give the pass to our enemies instead of pointing out that they are violating the Geneva Conventions and that the conflict is unConventional. And as for waterboarding, why the big push to claim it’s not torture (and therefore, legitimate to use on Americans who are captured)? O, so we can continue the farce that this is a legitimate war in line with the Hague/Geneva Conventions and Protocols (IOW, selling out American troops for W to save face).
The Administration first tried to properly define the threats posed by Iraq: it was a destabilizing influence in the Middle East, a serial human rights abuser, and a state sponsor of terror. Al-Qaeda and its affiliate organizations were distinguished as a transnational enemy whose tentacles stretched into countries whose governments we did not intend to replace.
A declaration of war, however, would have been inadequate given the context of the greater threat. War, under our Constitution is to be declared by Congress, and in keeping with international law, it can only be declared against state entities.
However, we face a larger war against terrorists who operate under the color of a religious ideology and only concurrently as proxies for the state powers whose leaders share their broader goals. Bush's failure to properly identify and categorize this enemy was his undoing.
Going in, we knew that the defeat of the Iraqi Army and the toppling of the Saddam regime were only the beginning; the greater battle was to be fought against Islamists who operated both within Iraq and from beyond its borders, and against combatants not subject to the same international conventions as are uniformed regular soldiers.
I believe Bush understood all of this, but as with so much else during his tenure, he could simply not put it into words so as to make others understand,
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