The Value of Gitmo

Presidential Candidate Obama thundered on the campaign trail about how he would close Gitmo as soon as he became president. He may change his mind as President because presidents can not afford to be ignorant and irresponsible as candidates for president can be. Of the 800+ prisoners tossed into Gitmo, most have been cut loose. Some were innocent, some were transferred back to their home countries, and some were small fish not worth holding. There are about 250 remaining, who are the worst of the worse.

Obama is about to discover, doubtless to his surprise, that the Bush approached worked, stopping follow-on attacks on the USA by vigorous interrogation of terrorist chieftains. It's entirely likely that Obama will leave Gitmo substantially alone, if not to defend America then to defend his own reputation against letting terrorists go who will kill Americans. Again.

Thomas Joscelyn lays it out in "Clear and Present Danger" in the Weekly Standard:

"For example, in his autobiography, At the Center of the Storm, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet explained that KSM's interrogation led to the arrest of an entire cell that was plotting destruction. The same day KSM was detained in 2003, another terrorist named Majid Khan was picked up. During his interrogation, KSM admitted that Khan had recently passed along $50,000 to operatives working for al Qaeda's chieftain in Southeast Asia, a man known as Hambali. When interrogators confronted Khan with KSM's revelation, Khan confirmed it and said that he gave the money to an agent of Hambali named Zubair. Khan gave his interrogators Zubair's telephone number. Shortly thereafter, Zubair was taken into custody and gave up information that led to the arrest of yet another operative nicknamed "Lilie." According to Tenet, Lilie then provided information that led to Hambali's arrest in Thailand.

"Khan, Hambali, Zubair, and Lilie are all high value detainees at Guantánamo. They were plotting the "second wave" of attacks on America when they were captured. According to the Guantánamo files, Zubair and Lilie were both chosen to be suicide hijackers in an al Qaeda attack on Los Angeles. They had also plotted against targets in Southeast Asia under the direction of Hambali. Hambali was responsible, in part, for planning the 2002 Bali bombings (killing more than 200 people) and a series of attacks on 30 churches in Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000 (killing 19).

"In addition to serving as an intermediary between KSM and the Hambali crew, Majid Khan was involved in other post-9/11 plots. Khan, who lived in Baltimore for years, was planning to smuggle explosives into the United States. He wanted to target gas stations and landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge, and he recommended to KSM that a truck driver living in Ohio named Iyman Faris could help. Faris, who had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, had begun preparations for these attacks. But within weeks of KSM's and Khan's capture, Faris was identified and arrested. Months later, Faris was convicted of providing material support to al Qaeda and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

"Another of Khan's accomplices, a Pakistani named Uzair Paracha, was also arrested just weeks after Khan and KSM. In late March 2003, authorities raided Uzair's apartment in Brooklyn. There they found a number of incriminating pieces of evidence linking Uzair to Khan. In 2005 Uzair was convicted, and in 2006 he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

"Uzair's father, Saifullah Paracha, is a current resident of Guantánamo. Although he has not been designated a high value detainee, he clearly consorted with terrorists. Saifullah is reportedly a multimillionaire who owns a Pakistani media company and a textile business, which exported goods to the United States. Al Qaeda wanted to use Saifullah's textile business to smuggle explosives into the United States. Saifullah also offered his media company's services to Osama bin Laden for the production of al Qaeda's propaganda.

"KSM and Khan were not the only high value detainees to give up crucial, life-saving details during their interrogations. In March 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured at his safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. In At the Center of the Storm, Tenet says that Zubaydah unwittingly gave up information that led to the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh on September 11, 2002. At the time, Binalshibh was plotting an attack on Heathrow Airport in London. At least several of the detainees at Guantánamo were captured along with Zubaydah at his safe house in 2002, and they too were involved in al Qaeda's post-9/11 plotting. For example, Zubaydah intended to use one of them in an attack on Israel.

"The greatest success of the Bush administration is that it stopped all of this, and more, from happening."

So, the question is whether Obama will deliver on his foolish campaign promise to close Gitmo and let the terrorists loose via the courts or will he sober up and realize these people are hellbent on killing more Americans? Obama has proven in the past to be averse to making risky decisions and agile at avoiding embarassments. It's just possible that Obama's fecklessness may play in favor of keeping terrorists locked up in Gitmo. Perhaps he will kick a couple loose through the courts to maintain the pretence of keeping his promise.

What Iraq Would Look Like

... if Obama had defeated the surge.

Senator McCain makes the case against Obama's defeatism in Powerline:

"Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

"We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq.

Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

"Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

"And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
...
"Three weeks after Senator Obama voted to deny funding for our troops in the field, General Ray Odierno launched the first major combat operations of the surge. Senator Obama declared defeat one month later: "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." His assessment was popular at the time. But it couldn't have been more wrong.

"By November 2007, the success of the surge was becoming apparent. Attacks on Coalition forces had dropped almost 60 percent from pre-surge levels. American casualties had fallen by more than half. Iraqi civilian deaths had fallen by more than two-thirds. But Senator Obama ignored the new and encouraging reality. "Not only have we not seen improvements," he said, "but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."

"If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheikhs who had begun to cooperate with us, and the "Sunni Awakening" would have been strangled at birth. Al Qaeda fighters would have safe havens, from where they could train Iraqis and foreigners, and turn Iraq into a base for launching attacks on Americans elsewhere. Civil war, genocide and wider conflict would have been likely.

"Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened. Our military, strained by years of sacrifice, would have suffered a demoralizing defeat. Our enemies around the globe would have been emboldened. ...

"Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.

"Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. ... In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

"Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice."

It takes a colossal arrogance and determination to see America defeated to go to Iraq and stare your Big Fat Mistake in the face and claim you were still right after all, as Obama did, and absurdly claim that the US military had nothing to do with the current success in Iraq, that the Sunni sheikhs just spontaneously generated the Anbar Awakening on their own. It's like claiming that the Normandy invasion in WWII was a waste of lives and money because the Germans surrendered on their own initiative.

"Kill The Pigs"

John Murtagh, an attorney and professor in New York, has watched Obama excuse away his close association with lefty terrorist Bill Ayers with particular interest and weighs in with his own unique perspective in a column called "Fire in the Night: The Weathermen tried to kill my family" in the excellent City Journal:

"During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me. ...

"In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. ... Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS. ...

"Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.

"As the association between Obama and Ayers came to light, it would have helped the senator a little if his friend had at least shown some remorse. But listen to Ayers interviewed in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, of all days: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Translation: “We meant to kill that judge and his family, not just damage the porch.” When asked by the Times if he would do it all again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”"

Ayers once described the Weathermen as "an American Red Army" whose mission was, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents." In his book, "Fugitive Days," Ayers boasts that he "participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972." Bombing the Pentagon was particularly dreamy for Ayers, "Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them." Osama Bin Laden could not have said it better on September 11.

In fact, Professor Ayers is positively euphoric about bombing people:

"There's something about a good bomb … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind. Big buildings and wide streets, cement and steel were no longer permanent. They, too, were fragile and estructible. A torch, a bomb, a strong enough wind, and they, too, would come undone or get knocked down."

Ayers is unrepentant about bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the NYPD, and John Murtagh's family. Obama is unrepentant about his friendship with Bill Ayers and his equally loathesome wife, Bernardine Dohrn. America should be unrepentant about rejecting Obama and his treasonous crew. America should be fighting the terrorists, not doing dinner with them.

What Obama Means By Change

Little Green Footballs notes that Obama's campaign office in Houston featured a Cuban flag with Che Guevara's face plastered on it, in this local Fox 26 television interview. In fact, one wasn't enough, there were two. LGF quite reasonably wonders why Obama won't wear a US flag pin on his lapel but his supporters have no reluctance to feature Che's face in Obama's campaign office.

For those who are unfamiliar with Che, he was the architect of Cuba's gulag and secret police, the one who wrote home to his dad after his first execution to tell him he REALLY liked killing people, the guy who went on to kill 1892 people. Che was the one who dispensed with evidence and trials, saying they were obsolete bourgeois artifacts, that people should be executed based on revolutionary necessity, that the people would only learn when taught with the pedagogy of the firing squad. It was Che, the psycho serial killer, who had the doomed tapped for blood donations on the way to their executions, that blood sold for a profit. It was Che who planned to plant incendiary bombs in all the major department stores in New York City on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year, a plot that was mercifully discovered and stopped. And he's a hero to the Obama crowd.

Obama has been awfully sketchy about the particular changes he has planned to make America better. Is Che his model? When the flag in the Houston office was brought to Obama's attention, he casually dismissed it as "inappropriate," but didn't ask that it be taken down. This is the same Obama who castigated his fellow senators who wore flag pins as "hypocrites." Cuban/Che flag good. American flag bad.

The Babalu Blog notes:

"Let's see. Castro endorses a Clinton/Obama ticket. Obama has Greg Craig, castro's attorney during the Elian episode, as a senior policy
advisor. He was for lifting the embargo before he was against it. And now his campaign workers put up a picture of Che Guevara that's 3 times as big as Obama's own poster in his campaign office. And a self-respecting Cuban would vote for this guy, why?"

The crazed moonbat Che/Obama lover who hung the Cuban flag appears to be Maria Isabel, a property rights activist who has been engaged in a fight with city hall over her plans to build a McMansion on her plot in the Sixth Ward of Houston. She's quoted in a TV interview as saying, "It’s wrong to try to implement restrictions in my private property. I own this piece of land. This is America. I should be able to do anything I want with it." Well, that's true enough, but an odd thing for somebody to say who flies the flag of communist Cuba, where you have no property rights, or rights of any kind.

Now, the odds are this nutty woman doesn't know who Che is any more than she knows who Obama is. She's probably got scrambled eggs for brains. But both Obama and Che appeal to her for emotional reasons, which is to say her support is irrational. There is no denying that Obama has a powerful appeal for the stupid. It is a terrible spectacle to see the Stupid energized and in motion, bound for a Stupid destination with Stupid intentions.

Barack Obama

It's true. A picture is worth a thousand words. I'm thinking the caption on this should be:

"Please elect me to be president of an America I don't respect."