I guess “crayon therapy” isn’t what the doctor ordered.
Via Weasel Zippers, ABC News reported:
Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.
American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.
“The so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke,” a U.S. diplomat said in describing the Saudi efforts with released Guantanamo detainees.
A similar rehabilitation program in Yemen was stopped because so many of the detainees quickly joined with al Qaeda or its affiliates, the official said.
Saudi officials concede its program has had its “failures” but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.
One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen. …
Has the administration learned anything from this episode? By the looks of things, the answer is “no, they haven’t learned a thing.” Unfortunately.
Mark Thiessen has some advise for those charged with the defense of our nation.
The connection between this former Guantanamo detainee and the most recent al-Qaeda plot to attack the homeland is a cautionary tale — one that should give Americans pause about President Obama’s plans to release more detainees and shut down the detention center at Guantanamo. Just days before the attempted attack in Detroit, the Obama administration transferred six more Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. According to the summary of evidence prepared by Guantanamo officials, one of those released, Farouq Ali Ahmed, was a member of al-Qaeda who was “observed carrying an AK-47 and wearing fatigues at UBL’s private airport in Kandahar”and was captured with an organized group of mujahedin fighters after the fall of Tora Bora. Another, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, admitted to Guantanamo officials that “he met with Usama Bin Laden on a number of occasions.” Perhaps these men will now lead peaceful lives. Or they might, like al-Shihri, return to jihad. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, at least 74 terrorists released from Guantanamo are believed to have returned to the fight. Those still at the facility, according to the Brookings Institution, include: 26 members of al-Qaeda’s leadership cadre, 90 lower-level al-Qaeda operatives, eight members of the Taliban leadership, 81 foreign fighters and 11 Taliban fighters and operatives. Releasing such terrorists, or bringing them to America, is dangerous and misguided.
Instead of looking for ways to release these dangerous men, we should be capturing and interrogating more of them for information on planned attacks. But that is something the U.S. no longer does. President Obama has shut down the CIA interrogation program that helped stop a series of planned attacks — and in the year since he took office, not one high-value terrorist has been interrogated by the CIA.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has escalated the targeted killing of high-value terrorists. There may be times when killing a terrorist leader is the best option (for example, his location might be too remote to reach with anything but an unmanned drone). But President Obama has decided capturing senior terrorist leaders alive and interrogating them — with enhanced techniques if necessary —is not worth the trouble.
Intelligence we’ll never see
The problem with this approach is that dead terrorists cannot tell their plans. According to ABC News, Abdulmutallab has told investigators there are “more just like him in Yemen who would strike soon.” Who are these terrorists? Where have they been deployed? We may not find out until it is too late because we launched a strike intended to kill the al-Qaeda leaders who could give us vital intelligence.
On Christmas Eve, U.S. and Yemeni forces struck a compound where senior al-Qaeda leaders were meeting. Among those believed killed, The Washington Post reported, were “Nasser al-Wuhayshi, al-Qaeda’s regional leader, and his deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri.” A U.S. official told the Post that they were “the two biggest fish in the most violent offshoot of al-Qaeda that exists in the world.” Subsequent reports have indicated al-Wuhayshi might have survived. The fates of the two men remain unclear.
In an earlier time, when we tracked down such big fish, we would take them in alive, hand them over to the CIA and find out their plans to kill Americans. No longer. If we had tried to capture, instead of kill, these two terrorist leaders, they could have told us whether more like Abdulmutallab were on the way. Now, they might have taken these secrets to the grave. And we are left to hope that the passengers on the next flight are as brave as those who subdued Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day.
Unfortunately, it’s doutbful they will obtain any useful information from Abdulmatallab. He should have been turned over to the CIA for interrogation and then sent to Gitmo. But instead, we’re providing him with the best health care in the world, and a tax payer funded attorney who most likely will tell him to remain silent. He’s been granted the constitutional rights of American citizens. He’s treated like a petty thief, rather than the enemy combatant that he is.
Update: Altas Shrugs posted the Jihad in America 2009 Year in Review – It’s so much worse than you may have thought.
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