From Robert Worth of the NYT:
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
bq. ...
bq. Although the Pentagon has said that dozens of released Guantánamo detainees have "returned to the fight," its claim is difficult to document, and has been met with skepticism.
...
bq. A Saudi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year after finishing the rehabilitation program.
It appears that terror rehabilitation programs exist, but their effectiveness seems to be in doubt, and Yemen is delinquent in establishing their program:
Almost half the camp's remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program -- partly financed by the United States -- similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.
The prison at Guantanamo Bay put the United States in an international and Constitutional bind. The US courts have argued against long-term detention without legal recourse for the detainees, and the prosecuting attorneys had to throw away evidence that was revealed while the detainees were subject to US administered torture.
However, this is not the most significant way in which Gitmo failed. President Bush and the penal colony he established in Guantanamo failed to protect the United States from the very people detained. One NYT reader responded, "The article reveals more about the incompetence of the Bush Administration than the difficulties of closing Gitmo.... Dealing with Gitmo isn't as difficult as the article suggests unless one ignores essential facts , and George Bush did just that for 8 years." He continues, "The notion that sending Mr. al-Shihri to a "Saudi rehabilitation program" could reform a known jihadist is absurd. It's as effective as throwing Brer Rabbit into the briar patch: there should have been no surprise that this terrorist would resurface at one of our embassies with a bomb."
Closing Gitmo brings international goodwill to the new administration without denying Americans security. However, countries that fail to effectively cooperate with the US should also be held responsible for their actions. Hopefully, the Obama Administration will find a better, legal way to deal with the detainees and protect the US from future attacks.
Eli Lake of the Washington Times has the best coverage of the Obama Administration's decisions on closing Guantanamo, CIA "black sites," and torture. Lake carefully examines the loopholes through which Obama is continuing some of Bush's secretive policies:
President Obama's executive order closing CIA "black sites" contains a little-noticed exception that allows the spy agency to continue to operate temporary detention facilities abroad.
The provision illustrates that the president's order to shutter foreign-based prisons, known as black sites, is not airtight and that the Central Intelligence Agency still has options if it wants to hold terrorist suspects for several days at a time.
bq. ...
bq. The detentions would be temporary. Suspects either would be brought later to the United States for trial or sent to other countries where they are wanted and can face trial.
In other articles, Lake notes that secret interrogating techniques will also continue under the Obama Administration.
If a US President bends the rules to protect the American people, it better be effective.
Well, needless to say, the GW bashers will assert that the horror of Gitmo drove these people back to terrorism.
The only problem with Gitmo as a premise is that it was public. Any nation on earth would have established basically the same thing, only not under the eyes of CNN. I suspect a lot of this points back to distrust in the competence of the CIA, and hence the Bush administration's reliance on the Defense Department to oversee dealing with high level terror types.
These people should have immediately disappeared never to be heard from again, which how Clinton handled the problem, and every nation with any sense.
Unfortunately it may be too late for crafting a wise and judicious policy. The courts are in charge now. They've ordered 17 detainees from Gitmo brought to the United States and released. It certainly follows that if we are going to treat enemy combatants from Tora Bora as entitled to American Constitutional privileges, then they should be released here if their homeland will not accept them.
The case is on appeal, and the courts may find a way to lie to themselves to avoid the embarrassment of their unprecedented activism.
Charles you say that "Closing Gitmo brings international goodwill to the new administration without denying Americans security." - can you expand on that?
Marc
The belief is not absurd. The persuasion of Islamic clerics has worked in some cases. Nor is it ridiculous to think that someone who may have grown up with some Wahabbist madrassa as their only source for both education and Islamic understanding, might reconsider once he began to understand a serious theological disagreement exists about his actions.
It's only ridiculous to someone with no personal experience of religion.
The question is whether relying on this is prudent, and in what circumstances. Rehabilitation has worked on some hard-core prison inmates, too, as many a liberal will point out.
Some of us don't think that's a persuasive argument against the death penalty, depending on the crime committed. Likewise, the appropriate treatment for senior jihadists is a military trial as illegal combatants, followed by a firing squad in accordance with the laws of war, with sentence commutable via co-operation.
For footsoldier types, it may be prudent to take a chance now and again on rehabilitation, within an Islamic context that addresses the root cause. That is to say, their religious belief.
Trial in civilian courts a la O.J. is not a prudent chance. It guarantees a lot of people like our second-in-command Yemeni friend, other people unwilling to give us intelligence because their information may end up being made public (and that may be traceable to them, with predictable consequences), and probably a bunch of dead Americans.
To people who see al-Shihri as a co-belligerent against the evils of Western Civ, of course, that's just fine. There are quite a few of those.
Hope isn't a plan. What's yours?
The belief is not absurd..It's only ridiculous to someone with no personal experience of religion
If someone believes in a theory that simply does not work in the majority of cases(like theories concerning alchemy or communism) that belief can be called absurd. I'm not religious, and I don't know much about volcano worshippers, but if they consistently sacrifice virgins to the volcano, and if the rain never comes, their belief could be called absurd.
Hope isn't a plan. What's yours?
Stop allying with the Saudi supporters of al Qaeda. You can't fight a war by allying with your enemies.
George Friedman has an excellent analysis of Afghanistan at Stratfor. (Hat tip: Fabius Maximus.) One of Friedman's lines of argument is relevant to this Gitmo discussion. He identifies "Al Qaeda prime" as the Afghanistan/NWFP-based cadre of well-trained foreign Islamists around bin Laden and Zawahiri--the ones who pulled off 9/11, and had developed the capability for further strikes in the West. Friedman distinguishes 'prime' from the Taliban of Afghanistan and the Pashtun NWFP, and similarly from other assemblages of motivated, violent, but unskilled Islamists in other countries. (Reminiscent of what Dan Darling used to call AQ's "franchises" in these pages.)
Friedman believes that AQ prime has been mostly incapacitated, perhaps permanently, by concerted US action in central Asia. In addition to driving his prescriptions for what Obama should do in Afghanistan, this view suggests that released Gitmo detainees are unlikely to pose a mortal threat to the West: their organization no longer exists in its former threatening form.
Of course, this stance requires accepting some fairly controversial premises. It also means tolerating a certain amount of lethal 'mayhem'. See Yemen...
Sorry for the double entry above. It seems to take the new Movable Type a couple of minutes to upload a comment onto the site. So... patience is a virtue!
I think we have that fixed, AMac...
Marc