Obama Says He Will Continue To Set Islamic Terrorists Free From Guantanamo Bay
President Barack Obama says his administration will continue releasing terrorists from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so long as those released are less dangerous than the jihadists currently fighting against the U.S. and its interests
The
bizarre argument comes in a new interview with Olivier Knox of Yahoo!
News and is one of several comments in their discussion that reinforces
the president's stubborn nonchalance on issues related to jihad. Obama
also shrugs off concerns about recidivism of former Guantanamo
detainees, suggesting that only a "handful" of former detainees have
returned to the fight and claiming that only "low-level" terrorists have
been released from the detention facility. Both claims are demonstrably
false.
In the interview, Knox asked Obama about Ibrahim al Qosi,
a Guantanamo detainee transferred by the Obama administration to Sudan
in July 2012, who recently resurfaced as a leader of al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, often described as the most dangerous al Qaeda
branch. Al Qosi appeared in a propaganda video disseminated by the group
last week. Knox asked Obama whether having someone return to the fight
"in a big way," like Qosi, has caused the administration to revisit its
vetting procedures.
"I
am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military
advisers, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for
organizations like ISIS," Obama began. "And if we want to fight 'em,
then we can't give 'em these kinds of excuses."
Allen West RIPS Obama over GITMO Swap:
Interview
with Allen B West from over a year ago, very interesting to see how
badly the situation has dramatically spiraled out of control since then.
There
is no reason that Obama would need to be "persuaded" of something that
can be easily demonstrated. Either Guantanamo is a major recruitment
tool or it's not.
Administration officials have been making this claim for years and it's not true.
Guantanamo rarely appears in jihadist propaganda,
whether ISIS or al Qaeda, and reviews of recent propaganda materials
from ISIS and al Qaeda – online videos and audio recordings, glossy
magazines, etc. – found very few mentions of the facility.
"Keep
in mind that between myself and the Bush administration hundreds of
people have been released and the recidivism rate – we anticipate,"
Obama said. "We assume that there are going to be – out of four, five,
six-hundred people that get released – a handful of them are going to be
embittered and still engaging in anti-US activities and trying to link
up potentially with their old organizations."
A handful? Obama is woefully ill-informed or he's being dishonest. According
to the most recent report on Guantanamo recidivism, prepared in
September 2015 by James Clapper's office, Obama's own Director of
National Intelligence, 196 former detainees are either confirmed (117)
or suspected (79) of returning to the fight. That's a recidivism rate of
more than 30 percent. Intelligence officials tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD
that those numbers are almost certainly low, as they do not include
jihadists the United States and its allies are no longer tracking.
(Obama's formulation there is odd, too, using "embittered" as if the reason the jihadists would once again take up arms against the United States is their time in detention.)
Obama
continued, describing the process officials use to determine whether a
detainee can be released or transferred. "The judgment that we're
continually making is: Are there individuals who are significantly more
dangerous than the people who are already out there who are fighting?
What do they add? Do they have special skills? Do they have special
knowledge that ends up making significant threat to the United States?"
It's
an odd set of criteria for evaluating threats unless your main
objective is emptying the detention facility. These are standards set up
to allow the administration to claim that the knowledge base and skill
sets of Guantanamo detainees are outdated. But former Guantanamo
detainees return to the fight with elevated status and often assume
leadership roles in the groups determined to attack the U.S. and its
interests. Just like Ibrahim al Qosi.
Obama
went on to suggest that those released don't present much of a threat
anyway. "And so the bottom line is that the strategic gains we make by
closing Guantanamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals
who, you know, have been released so far."
Again, Obama's claim is false. Many
of the 653 detainees transferred or released from Guantanamo as of
September 2015 were much more significant than "low-level individuals."
It's a group that includes al Qaeda operatives who worked directly for
Osama bin Laden, senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban, and veteran
jihadists with decades of experience fighting.
According
to assessments provided by Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the original
population of Guantanamo was 43 percent "high risk," and 36 percent
"medium risk." Only 20 percent of those ever detained at Guantanamo were
deemed "low risk." The Bush administration transferred many of the
detainees found to present minimal risks to the U.S. and by the time
Obama took office, 98.7 percent of those remaining were considered medium risk (23.8 percent) or high risk (74.9 percent).
Consider the Taliban Five, released in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl.
Although Obama administration officials initially downplayed the
significance of these detainees, intelligence and military officials
made it clear that they were high-risk transfers. Michael Leiter, the
former head of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama, said it
was "very, very likely" that the five Taliban leaders would return to
the fight. Rob Williams, the national intelligence officer for South
Asia, who briefed Congress shortly after the transfer, testified that
there was a high likelihood that at least four of the five freed
detainees, and possibly all of them, would rejoin the fight.
And what about Ibrahim al Qosi? He's the Guantanamo recidivist that triggered Knox's question to the president. Was he a "low-level" fighter, as Obama suggested?
He
is not. Qosi is now a senior leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, as well as the group's public spokesman. AQAP has repeatedly
attempted to attack the U.S., while taking over large parts of Yemen.
The dossier compiled by U.S. officials for Qosi demonstrates that he
served bin Laden in multiple roles because he was so trusted.
A
threat assessment of al Qosi prepared by the intelligence officials on
the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) reported that he would
present a "high risk" of taking up arms against the United States or its
allies if he were freed from the detention facility. "Detainee is an
admitted veteran jihadist with combat experience beginning in 1990 and
it is assessed he would engage in hostilities against US forces, if
released."
Virtually everything Obama said in his Yahoo interview about Guantanamo is false.Guantanamo
is not a leading recruitment tool for jihadists. From the earliest days
of the facility, many of those detained there were deemed more than the
"low-level" fighters the president would have us believe. And far more
than a "handful" of released detainees – nearly 200 suspected or
confirmed – have returned to the fight.
We are left with this uncomfortable but incontrovertible fact: Barack
Obama is releasing jihadists known to present a serious threat to the
United States and he's misleading the country about it. source
Geoffrey Grider | December 14, 2015 at 6:53 pm URL: http://wp.me/p1kFP6-a1f
Laura J Alcorn
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