A Lot Of "Allah Akbars" From Gunatanamo

It's been a great week for our Guantanamo detainees. First Boumediene v. Bush, in which an activist SCOTUS decided foreign combatants who have never stepped foot in America deserved rights no nation anywhere, ever, have granted. Now this:

A military defense lawyer urged a Guantanamo judge to help restore America's reputation by dropping attempted murder charges against an Afghan prisoner who was subjected to 14 consecutive days of sleep deprivation.

"You have an opportunity to restore just a bit of America's lost luster," Air Force Maj. David Frakt told the judge presiding in the war crimes case against Afghan prisoner Mohammed Jawad. (Rueters)

Jawad is in the Cuban clinker because he's a combatant -- he threw a grenade into a group of GIs -- but his attorney thinks that's no big deal, that America's reputation is so tarnished by Jawad's sleep deprivation that he ought to walk.

Imagine how much these thugs want Barack Obama to be elected, so they can be treated as lawbreakers instead of combatants, and arguments like Frakt's can be emoted all over a bunch of juries who aren't my peers or yours. If things break their way, they'll be back on the battlefield in no time, trying to kill our boys.

Obama buttons would be a hot commodity in Guantanamo.

What Next For Guantanamo's Bad Guys?

The Libs won, finally, after pushing pig-headedly through every logical obstacle placed before them, and got the men of Guantanamo, who never saw a provision of the Geneva Conventions they didn't mind breaking, rights beyond what we've ever offered foreign enemy combatants before.

Now that a few hundred habeas hearings are going to be scheduled before federal judges, what possible hope do we have that the judges will handle the matter well? As Andy McCarthy points out today at The Corner, we don't trust judges enough with criminal cases to let them make habeas decisions without reams of guidance and piles of precedence, there are no such safety brakes in place to guide judges in the proper handling of foreign enemy combatants. McCarthy points out the risks of this situation:

By comparison, (a) alien unlawful enemy combatants are more serious threats to public safety (indeed, to national security) than drug dealers and violent felons; (b) alien unlawful enemy combatants are also not defendants accused of crimes (they're hostile operatives captured in military operations overwhelming authorized by Congress following the mass-killing of nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11) and, therefore, they are not entitled in detention hearings to the constitutional presumption of innocence that applies in civilian prosecutions (by contrast, they do get the presumption of innocence if charged with war crimes); and (c) judges have no institutional competence in determining the status of enemy combatants, a war power the framers committed to the political branches.

McCarthy proposes a narrow detention procedure law for these cases, which could be modeled on the federal pretrial detention statute, followed by a national security court, but sees the problems inherent in the suggestion. The Left has fought tooth and nail to minimize the risk posed by the Guantanamo detainees and to give them undeserved legal rights, and they're not about to settle for a Pyhrric victory this close to the finish line.

Even with all the guidance before them, liberal judges often make horrible habeas decisions, and little itty bitty bad guys catch a break as a result. It would be nice to say "we can't allow such mistakes to happen with the detainees," but that's ridiculous. We are going to allow such mistakes to happen thanks to the SCOTUS ruling, and we are going to deal with the consequences -- in this case, the deaths of our soldiers, our allies, or us.

I share McCarthy's concern that when that happens, Obama and the other politicians who brought us to this point will be shielded by the courts. Let's hope that as that happens, the communicators on our side will be more effective than the Bush communications team, and the American people will be reminded that it was politicians on the left, not the courts, that have the greatest measure of responsibility.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Obama Largely To Blame For SCOTUS Guantanamo Ruling

John McCain's promise to close Guantanamo is one strike against him in my playbook, but I can't find a quarrel with his position on yesterday's awful Supreme Court decision extending habeas corpus to terrorist foreign combatants.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday sharply denounced a Supreme Court decision that gave suspected terrorist detainees a right to seek their release in federal courts.

"I think it's one of the worst decisions in history," McCain said. "It opens up a whole new chapter and interpretation of our constitution." ...

McCain ... attacked the decision, saying the law he helped write "made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, they are not citizens, they do not have the rights of citizens."

He might have thought about that before calling for the closing of the prison, so his slam of the SCOTUS decision rings a bit hollow. But in this political year, I'll take it gladly -- especially when compared to Obama's reaction.

Of course, I haven't found a reaction from Obama, which isn't that surprising because he is probably considering his options ... none of them too attractive ... before getting someone to write words for him to deliver smoothly from his teleprompter.

Here's the cause of his troubles:

Lawyers for Gitmo detainees endorse Obama

(January 28, 2008) -- More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid.

The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration's detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to "restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community." The attorneys are representing the detainees in habeas corpus lawsuits, which are efforts to get individual hearings before federal judges in order to challenge the basis for their indefinite imprisonment without trial.

The attorneys praised Obama for being a leader in an unsuccessful fight in the fall of 2006 to block Congress from enacting a law stripping courts of jurisdiction to hear Guantanamo detainee lawsuits. The constitutionality of that law, which was part of the Military Commissions Act, is now being challenged before the Supreme Court in one of the most closely-watched cases this term.

"When we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration's bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us," they wrote. "Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo. ... Senator Obama demonstrated real leadership then and since, continuing to raise Guantanamo and habeas corpus in his speeches and in the debates."

(Read the whole article here.)

We know how that turned out, so we can thank Obama for the mess the five Sept. 10-think judges on the SCOTUS have put us in.

We know what Obama is feeling about the decision: Elation. He worked hard to achieve giving enemy combatants the opportunity to use our courts as a weapon of war -- a right we did not extend to the thousands of Nazi prisoners of war who were on our land, not offshore in Cuba. But Obama's work was in the fall of '06 -- basically a decade or so ago in Obama Time. Now that he's a general election candidate, he'll have to figure out how to fake a different, less hardcore hard-left response to use when he's asked for a response to the decision.

One thing is for certain: He will work hard to separate himself from the 80 volunteer Guantanamo lawyers. The bodies on the other side of the separated from Obama gap are becoming legion; I wonder if there's room for 80 more.

Long Awaited

2,459 days after his plan was executed, killing 2,792 innocents,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sits in a courtroom, a major milestone in his descent to Hell.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is facing a military judge in his long-awaited first public appearance before a war-crimes tribunal.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators have taken their seats at defense tables before Judge Ralph Kohlmann, a Marine colonel.

Their arraignment Thursday is the highest-profile test yet of the controversial tribunal system, which is being challenged in court. It comes seven years after the attacks. All five face the death penalty if convicted.

How very odd, and how very American, that Mohammed (familiar name; isn't that some prophet or something?) awaits his fate amidst the dry, orderly environs of a military courtroom.

How very different from those he judged misjudged, who he sentenced to painful, noisy, smelly, terrifying deaths, without ever once looking any one of them in the eye.

And how amazing that there are American lawyers who hate the country that nurtured them and gave them freedom so much that they are standing beside this pillar of Islamism, attacking America to defend him.

Terminally Backwards

Leftyblogger Attaturk at Firedoglake is hot and bothered this morning:

The Chinese are apparently taking a supervisory role in overseeing their investment.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."

Let's forget for the moment that lawyers for Guantanamo detainees are the worst of the hardcore left and are about as believable as Bill confronting a blue dress. And let's forget that the report is reporting on what it knows little about. Did we soften them up (i.e., keep them awake for a bit) or did we let the Chinese do it? Dunno. And let's forget that what these dolts call torture is just routine interrogation. Just watch an episode of Law and Order.

What rankles me about Attaturk and Manning is this: They are abuse biggots and terror deniers. They never wrote, I'm sure, about similar behavior by Chinese in their interrogations of Christians. Didn't matter to them.

And the Uighurs? They're de facto heroes to these folks, no questions asked. I've written human rights pieces on the Uighurs myself, but let's remember, they're an Islamic people from China's Western frontier.

Some of them are simply an abused minority, just wanting to practice their religion in peace, but prevented by the omnipresent Beijing Thumb all China is under. But some of them are Islamist jihadists intent on stoning adulteresses, beheading homosexuals and apostates, replacing China's rule of law (such as it is) with Sharia, and converting all of China by the sword. In other words, they are one and the same with al-Qaeda and those darlings of the Firedoglake set, Hamas and Hezbollah.

This is the global war on terror and I think it's safe to assume that anyone held in Guantanamo is a soldier on the wrong side of that war, not some hapless Muslim who just wants to pray towards Mecca five times a day. And because they are swine of that nature, it's not just fine but smart to have the Chinese drop by and find out what's up with them.

This is a case where the Uighurs should praise Allah because they're in Guantanamo. If they were captured in China, far from the watchful eyes of American military personnel, they no doubt would have suffered a far worse interrogation. This story could have been written from the "lucky detainees" angle except for one little niggle: That would go against all in the Left's warped worldview.

Do you doubt it? Just check out this comment on Attaturk's post:

Things are going well in bushdom. Now they can say that they are not the only ones that torture use enhanced interrogation techniques “see other people do it to so can it be all that bad”.

Will it ever end? No, not without impeachment so maybe we should impeach that f***ing pelosi madwoman as she is the classic enabler.

I swear that clinton2 is only still mucking about as a distraction from all the bull***t coming out of Washington. She is in the pay of the MIC and is doing their dirty work for them. Business as usual. [Profanity edited by C-SM]

Paranoid, hateful, distrusting. Your American Left has reported for duty in fine form today.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Padillo Sentenced; Let's Hear It For Guantanamo

Jose Padilla, accused of conspiring to plant an al-Qaeda dirty bomb on our shores, was sentenced today in U.S. courts ... to a whopping 17 years and three months.

That means that for that amount of time or less he will be free to attempt to indoctrinate other misfits in our prisons, then will be released back into our population a free man -- as if he were fully cleansed, completely safe and ready to be a good citizen.

Maybe if he accepts Christ while in prison ...

That's reason enough for all but the most foggy-minded to understand why you don't want to let terrorists into our court system, but it's nothing compared to the reason U.S. District judge Marcia Cooke gave for not sentencing Padilla to life:

Prosecutors had sought life in prison, but Cook [sic]said she arrived at the 17-year sentence after taking into consideration the "harsh conditions" during Padilla's lengthy military detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

"I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla ... they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case," the judge said. (AP)

Why do the conditions warrant consideration? Do those conditions somehow make him any less dangerous? Of course not! In fact, the conditions were what they were just because he his so dangerous.

Padilla is a US citizen, so he has a right to stand before this judge, who unfortunately also has a right to do the idiot thing she did.

But why, pray tell, should we extend this same lunacy to non-citizen enemy combatants?

But watch -- the Left will declare Padilla dodging a life sentence a great victory, and will use it to demand similar treatment for the bloodthirsty warriors of the Religion of Peace we are now holding securely removed from judges like Miss Marcia.

Those Nice Guantanamo Detainees ...

Here's an update from the International Herald Trib on the latest round of detainee releases from Guantanamo. In case you'd forgotten, all the detainees are wonderful, misunderstood innocents and America is the bad guy here.

A British resident freed from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists was arrested in connection with a Spanish extradition request on Thursday hours after returning to Britain, police said.

A police spokesman identified the man as 45-year-old Jordanian Jamil el-Banna. "He is being held on a European arrest warrant alleging terrorist related offences that was issued on behalf of the Spanish authorities," said the spokesman.

Police said Banna would appear before a London court later on Thursday. No other details were immediately available. ...

He and two other inmates from Guantanamo Bay, Libyan Omar Deghayes, 37, and Algerian Abdennour Sameur, 33, arrived in Britain on Wednesday after more than four years in captivity.

Deghayes and Sameur were arrested shortly before landing at an airport north of London under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and taken to a police station for questioning. ...

Their release from Guantanamo Bay followed campaigning by their families.

The United States has described the men as dangerous.

Spain apparently agrees. I imagine that after a few months of a Spanish-style inquisition interrogation ...

... Banna will be longing for those carefree days under American care on a sunny Caribbean isle.

Tortured By Lefty Comments

Andrew Sullivan and Salon both linked to my post this morning about Mike Huckabee's irresponsible and sophomoric comments about Guantanamo and waterboarding. They did not do this to underscore that Huckabee is not qualified to be a wartime president; rather, they did it to poke fun at those who believe as I do.

Here's the passage they mocked:

You can't be for closing Guantanamo unless you have a decent answer to the question of what you would do with the lovely people who bow toward Mecca from there. Return them to countries that won't have them? Give them trials in the U.S., where their attorneys would exploit our freedoms for the benefit of those who have professed their intentions to kill us by the millions?

And I don't care how uncomfortable or terrifying waterboarding may be to the few who deserve it. It's non-lethal, doesn't bruise the skin, break the bones, starve the tummy, or stretch the skeleton -- yet it can open sealed lips.

Sullivan's comment is so inane it boggles the mind:

Notice how torture is defended as something some terror suspects deserve. And notice no awareness that torture can open sealed lips to give us false information. The point of torture is always torture.

Yes, Andy, the people who are waterboarded do deserve it because they have been party to plots to kill our soldiers, our allies or us, and they don't want to be forthcoming with the information. We don't rush to waterboarding as step one, but if the person has information important enough and they would rather see innocents die instead of spilling the beans, then yes, they deserve it.

Sullivan also hoists up the old cannard about only false information being gained from torture waterboarding. (Sorry, torture to me is still, to paraphrase what I wrote this a.m., lethal, breaks the skin and bones, causes real physical danger, like starvation, or inflicts other bodily harm.) He ignores the fact that the technique has yielded true information that saved real lives on multiple occasions.

If the information is false, what's the result? Nothing happens. So we're supposed to stop pursing information because we're afraid nothing will happen?

If the point of torture were to torture, then Sullivan shouldn't even be asking about the efficacy of process for getting information; he should only ask about its efficacy for inflicting pain on one party and sick pleasure on another. America, of course, does not torture and we certainly are not the sort of country that does the despicable for the sake of doing the despicable. That's why we have the Army Field Manual. Shame on Sullivan for thinking so poorly of his country.

But not thinking well of country is the common demondenominator for this folks, as clearly stated by commentor Chop1:

Anyone can be a suspect for anything, even the writer of this piece, although I assume his blind trust of the government's wonderful intentions and incredible ability to only harshly interrogate those suspects who are actually guilty and deserve it exclude him from ever having to worry about this happening to himself of anyone he knows, so who really cares right?

I really don't have to worry about being waterboarded, and Chop1 doesn't have to either, unless he is an enemy combatant in reality, not just in his head. The Left's worry about diminishment of our freedoms and imminent ill-treatment by government rages without one example to cite. Go to jihad school, raise money under the guise of charity and send it to a recognized terrorist organization, fight on the wrong side in the war on terror and you've got something to worry about. Be paranoid about America and you don't.

The Left's deeply entrenched fear made Sam's comment a real hoot:

Do you check under your pillow for "jihadist/terrorists" every night before you go to bed. I suggest you see a psychiatrist, living in fear every day is no way to live.

I am considerably less afraid than any of these people because I am not afraid of my country. My country has never done anything to me personally to cause me to be afraid of it and I imagine the same is true of Sam and his friends on the Left. Yet they live in terror of bogeymen poised to strap them down in some dank dungeon.

Who needs the psychiatrist?

And who among these would recognize victory? They've achieved it, after all. Here, for example, is ME:

You are also aware that hundreds have been cleared for release because even the US didn't believe they were being held for a decent reason?

Frankly, I'm amazed that you think this argument is about run-of-the-mil POWs. It's not. It's about people who have been abducted by the US government who WEREN'T on a battlefield fighting american soldiers, and are being held without charge, without trial.

Gee willikers. These people who think America is out to get everyone just acknowledged that Guantanamo detainees won the right to have tribunals, and that these tribunals are either dangerously flawed or fair, because "hundreds" have been found worthy of release! Yet they still fear America.

M also thinks that if a general is captured in an air conditioned headquarters building planning an attack, he isn't a POW. Sorry, M, you don't have to be captured on the battlefield to be an enemy combatant.

All of these folks assume I just pull my opinions out of my behind, when in actuality I read their cherished liberal media outlets, NYT and WaPo, regularly peruse the Leftyblogs, read op/eds from both sides courtesy of Real Clear Politics, and admittedly read a lot of conservative blogs.

I therefore know what waterboarding is; I know it's history; I know the results we've achieved through all sorts of interrogation techniques; I know that America does not torture people; and perhaps most important, I know that the Left is trying desperately to redefine the word "torture" so it basically means "interrogation."

They do this because they are anti-war, anti-military, and ultimately, anti-American. Fortunately, they're also anti-convincing.