Posted on 02/27/2016 8:46:23 AM PST by Kaslin
The Guantanamo Bay detention camps have been attacked by many, including our own president, as contrary to American Values, as not "who we are" and a "recruitment tools for or enemies."
For those of us who have been there, who have observed the terrorists in court at Camp Justice., who have witnessed the great lengths our judiciary goes through to provide due process to the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) the red bearded, evil, boastful mastermind of the 9/11/01 attacks that murdered 2,976 individuals and shattered countless lives, GTMO is a symbol of American goodness and greatness.
Please, Mr. President:
I am honored to be part of a small group of 9/11 family members chosen to observe the pretrial proceedings. Objections to this facility and these proceedings, in my opinion, are unfounded.
GTMO represents the very best of America.
Eight of us arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, Saturday morning February 13, hopeful but apprehensive about our trip to Guantanamo to face the murderers of our family members. Aside from the deaths of our beloved brothers, husbands, fathers, sons and cousins, we all brought something in common; the pursuit of justice.
After a most rewarding week, we parted perfectly unified with the utmost respect for the prosecutors, our fantastic military, for American Justice and for one another. We took home with us hope, a more steely resolve for justice than ever, spiritual connections and a renewed sense of pride in America.
Those are the American values I was raised with but have been lost on this president.
This is a president who has authorized hundreds of deadly drone strikes resulting in thousands of deaths. Unlike rights afforded at GTMO, none of those droned was provided any due process nor were they allowed a seat before a just Military Commission.
This is a president whose trusted Attorney General for six years, Eric Holder, engineered the politically driven 1999 Clinton clemencies to the convicted terrorists of the FALN. This Puerto Rican terror group murdered my father, Frank Connor, at the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing among over 115 bombings and five murders.
Is releasing unrepentant terrorists now "who we are?"
This president pushes the normalization of relations with terror supporter, Cuba (even planning a state visit) without demanding the return of convicted fugitive FALN bomb maker, William Morales or BLA cop killer Joanne Chesimard who have received safe harbor for decades in Cuba.
So whose values does this president represent and whose values does he condemn?
The proceedings at GTMO provide boastful, unrepentant terrorists with more due process rights than most Americans receive. From the very best defense attorneys, to endless legal motions and access to potentially classified information, prayer mats in court, praying five times a day, these proud terrorists are being allowed to drag the process on indefinitely.
They are akin to suicide bombers. Using America's quest for justice against us and knowing they are likely to one day die at GTMO, these terrorists are taking with them the lives of the prosecution, military, media, 9/11 families and even their own defense teams as they drag on the proceedings year after year. As a member of the prosecution team said last week. "We want the trial done during the lives of the living."
The terrorists are allowed "hired guns" to view the proceedings. KSM's mitigation attorney, sponsored a guest, Scharlette Holdman, (who has represented the Unabomber and the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnev) standing in the gallery at the back of the courtroom next to the youngest members of our 9/11 family, bowed, saluted and traded friendly hand gestures with the terror leader.
When Holdman audibly referred to KSM as her "buddy" and the killer made eye contact, tauntingly smiling at the kids whose fathers he murdered, we had enough. Our family stood together and saw to her removal along with the translator KSM was trying to add to his defense team.
We witnessed pure evil in the courtroom that morning; the same evil the good people of our armed forces serving in Guantanamo Bay have dedicated their lives to bring to justice. Despite our president's rhetoric, rightly or wrongly, we as a nation have bent over backwards for the rights of these terrorists.
The United States did not ask for this fight. Our family members were barbarically murdered on 9/11 by a ruthless enemy with no country or borders. In the past, such captured fighters would hang. Today, Obama simply drones them with no due process. But Guantanamo Bay neither hangs nor drones. It tries.
Whether or not we believe the terrorists deserve such just treatment, GTMO houses these terrorist combatants as they are brought to justice; the very essence of who we are.
We all should be proud of the magnificent work being done at GTMO and of the great Americans dedicating their lives in bringing justice for our loved ones.
Mr. President, the great people at GTMO epitomize our American values. You could learn from them.
The camps must remain open.
Ping
The problem would be smaller if they would simply hang the ones who have no value to interrogators.
Just like islam.
I don’t understand the liberal logic.
1. The radical Muslims hate us.
2. The radical Muslims started this war against civilization.
3. Gitmo was set up to imprison those picked up on the battlefield of the war started by radical Islam.
4. The Muslims hated us before the war they started and before Gitmo was there.
5. Yet we are told that the mere presence of Gitmo enrages our enemies and causes them to hate us. We are told Gitmo helps recruit more soldiers of Allah in the war they started before there was a Gitmo ; they wanted to destroy us before there was Gitmo.
Clearly I’m missing something. They started this war but the fact that we have a POW camp is the reason this war goes on???
And how is it contrary to American values to humanely treat detainees at Gitmo? We are not beheading prisoners.
Obama needs Gitmo to complete his legacy as well as to return it to Cuba and complete that deal.
there is no federal prison in America that treats prisoners as lavishly as does Gitmo. The biggest problems Obama has with Gitmo is it holds muslim terrorists and its our property in Cuba. He hates both.
And they, the muslims have no one to convert.
Brought back here there would be a steady stream of potential possibilities!
None of it makes sense to anyone but a liberal.
If muslims are motivated to slaughter us because we have other muslims imcarcerated at GITMO why would they no longer
want to slaughter us if Obama moves the inmates to the federal Supermax prison in Colorado or to some other federal prison?
When he says “we,” he means pseudo-Americans like himself. In just this past week, we’ve seen what sort of people “we” are: A NYT writer encourages the assassination of a GOP presidential candidate; a woodenhead “celebrity” brags about kneeing in the groin all the GOP debaters on stage; and liberal senator masquerading as a republican, calls for shooting a fellow - an actual conservative - senator on the floor of the US Senate. Just the week before, “we” celebrated the death of a Supreme Court justice in the same fashion as muslims the world over celebrated 9/11.
That’s who obama’s “we” are, and he’s the head of the mov.
Ref GITMO:There is no way a pile of bricks, grass, glass and wire can recruit anyone. It is just a bunch of buildings. That’s like saying all the jails in the country do nothing but cause more crme. Typical Rio Linda faculty lounge thinking.
You just don't get it. GTMO is for those that killed Americans and are serving a life sentence. GET IT - LIFE FOR KILLING AN AMERICAN. No need for a trial since they are not entitled. I think we made a mistake in just giving them a military type of trial and firing squad.
These men were taken on the battlefield or in special-operations snatches. The "evidence", within the legal definition of same, required to convict them under our strict standards of criminal evidence, is nonexistent to very thin; most of it is military intelligence, which is often made up of grainy photos, recorded phone calls, third-party hearsay, and inference.
They are also illegal combatants. They should be shot or hanged, but the government has prolonged their lives in hopes of obtaining more intelligence from them, the alternative being their release by a U.S. court, and a propaganda victory for their side entailed in such a release.
Obama earnestly desires their exoneration under just such a scenario, followed immediately, as previously, by their return to the battlefield. He hates the (white) People of the United States with a passion and is perfectly malevolent, a "fiend" in the original meaning of the word.
He will try to return Guantanamo to Cuba to deprive his successors of a policy option and selfrighteously mark off an agenda item of his own, to the manifest injury of the People of the United States.
One cannot be in any way, shape or form, a muslim and an American. It is a complete contradiction in values. Those who may think they are would do a complete 180 when and if the worm turns.
soebarkah is an enemy islamist as anyone close to him and his administration knows.
We should annex Gitmo, admit it as a State, and let military families elect a couple new GOP Senators.
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