(Scott Johnson)

Tom Joscelyn notes that on Sunday, the New York Times published two op-eds by former Guantanamo detainees claiming they were wrongly detained innocents who were abused and tortured. Tom writes in an email message that the Times might have overlooked a few relevant facts: “Apparently, the Times didn’t realize that one of the two has previously claimed he was tortured more at Gitmo under the Obama administration than the Bush administration. So either the Obama administration is pro-torture, or the ex-Gitmo detainee is lying. As I explain in a lengthy Weekly Standard piece, there are plenty of reasons to doubt every word both ex-detainees say.” Analysts at Gitmo deemed both of the Times op-ed contributors “high” risks to the U.S. and its allies and recommended that they remain in the Defense Department’s custody.

Tom’s Weekly Standard piece makes the case that the Times has made itself the vehicle for disinformation fabricated by — oh, let’s come right out and say it — terrorist operatives. It’s not an airtight case; you have to use common sense to draw the necessary inferences, which is what the Joint Task Force Guantanamo did. According to Tom, JTF-GTMO deemed both of the Times op-ed contributors “high” risks to the United States and its allies and recommended that they remain in the Defense Department’s custody.

Tom’s piece is “The stories ex-Gitmo detainees tell.” Tom leaves a question hanging that is implicit in his piece: Why would the Times make itself the vehicle for terrorist disinformation?

I should add that the Times has done worse, but still…

Read more here.

Just the fact that he’s considering it is enough to make your blood boil. Via WaPo’s Marc Thiessen: President Obama is reportedly considering releasing several senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay as an enticement to get the Taliban to the peace table. If he does so, he will do tremendous harm to American national security [...]
Read more here.

Meet the Taliban leader Obama wants to release from Guantanamo
Read more here.

The Washington Post has an article today about the umpteenth instance of failed talks with the Taliban, with the U.S. apparently offering to release Taliban detainees from Guantanamo in return for a (worthless) promise from the Taliban to renounce international terrorism. The deal was scuttled, according to the Post, by (legitimate) objections from Hamid Karzai, but it is not clear if the administration could have carried out its end anyway because of domestic opposition to releasing more hardened terrorists from Gitmo.

What was really fascinating to me in this article was a section from the middle:

President Obama has already ordered the withdrawal by September of the 33,000 troops he sent to Afghanistan last year. “The big debate,” a Defense official said, is “can you come up with another number for what happens over the next 12 months” after that drawdown. “The argument will once again be the military saying let’s keep it at 68,000,” the number of troops who will remain in September, “and [Vice President] Biden saying let’s get it down to 20,000 really quickly, with the reality somewhere in between.”

Although Biden lost the argument over the surge in late 2009, officials said the internal administration balance has shifted toward a steeper glide path that would put the Afghans in charge sooner rather than later, in conjunction with a political settlement.

This is a fair description, I believe, of the president’s deeply muddled thinking on the future of Afghanistan. It suggests that he will make future decisions as he made decisions in the past: on a split-the-difference model. In 2010, he tacitly endorsed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request to pursue a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy but provided the minimal amount of resources required—only about 30,000 extra troops, which was at the “high risk” side of the options offered by McChrystal. This was in essence an attempt to compromise between McChrystal and Joe Biden, who advocated sending even fewer troops and pursuing a lesser, counterterrorism-focused mission. Then in June of this year, Obama ordered the premature withdrawal of those 30,000+ troops—they will be pulled out by September 2012, well ahead of the recommendations of military commanders. Now, with military commanders asking to keep at least 68,000 troops through 2014, President Obama seems set to draw down much faster than they recommend—although not to the extent advocated by the most strident anti-war voices.

You can see the political logic of what Obama is doing: He is trying to please both hawks and doves. Unfortunately, war is not a realm where half measures are likely to succeed. Adopting an ambitious strategy, as we’ve done in Afghanistan, but not resourcing it adequately, as Obama has also done, is a recipe for slow-motion failure. It is a high-risk strategy that is likely to get a lot of troops killed and for no good reason. Paradoxically, sending more troops would actually reduce casualties by making it easier to dominate the battlefield.

Not only does this make little sense strategically, it makes little sense politically: Obama will get just as much flak for keeping 50,000 troops in Afghanistan
as he would for 68,000. But the higher number provides a greater chance of success; more troops still would heighten our chances even more. If we are going to fight in Afghanistan, Obama needs to go “all in” as President Bush did during the surge in Iraq. He should not pin his hopes on peace talks which are unlikely to go anywhere.

Read more here.

Courts or Gitmo? Either/or, in this case.

An Iraqi refugee who turned out to have participated in the insurgencies prior to arriving in the US and took part in supporting them after his arrival created a controversy between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Obama administration.  Waad Ramadan Alwan lived in Kentucky, McConnell’s state, and his arrest by the FBI on [...]

Read this post »

Read more here.

Read more here.

In keeping with Obama’s deep affection for America.

(POLITICO) — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration is doing everything it can to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before the 2012 presidential elections.

Speaking Tuesday at the European Parliament, Holder said the administration is focused on closing the controversial facility “as quickly as possible, recognizing that we will face substantial pressure,” The Associated Press reports.

He added that the effort to shutter the detention facility would continue even after the 2012 elections if they can’t shut it down before then.

“We will be pressing for the closure of the facility between now and then — and after that election, we will try to close it as well,” Holder said. “Some people have made this a political issue without looking at, I think, the real benefits that would flow from the closure of the facility.”

The failure to keep his campaign promise of closing Guantanamo has been a headache for President Barack Obama throughout his presidency.

In December, Congress passed legislation that barred the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the U.S. — one method that Obama said would aide the process of closing the prison. In March, Obama said military trials could resume at the detention center, prompting some to accuse the White House of stepping further from the possibility of shutting down the facility.

Earlier this month, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan said the administration will not send any new war-on-terror prisoners to Guantanamo, saying, “It’s this administration’s policy to close Guantanamo and, despite some congressional hurdles that have been put in our path, we’re going to continue to pursue that.”

Meanwhile, Holder also reiterated on Tuesday that the United States would maintain its “fundamental break” from some harsh interrogation techniques.

“We have indicated that certain techniques that were used previously are in fact torture, and will not be engaged in again by the United States,” he said.

Read more here.

This is one of those terrorist celebrities used as a mascot by the so-called “human rights” groups, decried by the left as an anonymous victim. Of course, as soon as we go and free the guy he takes up arms against us once again.

Well, not any more.A former Guantanamo Bay detainee sent home to Afghanistan took up arms with al Qaeda — and, like Osama bin Laden, he ended up shot dead by US

Read more here.

I love a happy ending.

(LWJ) — The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced on Saturday that a “combined Afghan and coalition security force” had killed “a key affiliate of the al Qaeda network during a security operation in Jalalabad district, Nangarhar province.” The deceased “insurgent leader” has been identified as a a former Guantanamo detainee named Sabar Lal Melma.

Melma was “responsible for attacks and financing insurgent operations in the Pech district, Kunar province” and was “in contact with several senior al Qaeda members throughout Kunar and Pakistan,” according to an ISAF press release.

Afghan citizens helped security forces locate Melma, who emerged from his compound “with an AK-47 rifle and was killed.”

Melma was transferred to Afghanistan on Sept. 28, 2007. According to a leaked threat assessment, Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) identified Melma as a “medium risk,” who “may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.”

In the leaked file, dated June 3, 2005, JTF-GTMO recommended that Melma be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention.” JTF-GTMO previously recommended that Melma be retained in US custody. Like many former Guantanamo detainees approved for transfer to Afghanistan, however, Melma was released at some point after his repatriation.

ISAF reports that Melma is one of “more than 40 al Qaeda insurgents” killed or captured in eastern Afghanistan this year.

Keep reading…

Read more here.

(Steven Hayward)

Like John, I am puzzled by the media elite fascination with Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. Actually, I’m not puzzled at all. He perfectly fits the specs of Beltway consultants and journalists for a non-ideological, technocratic Republican who won’t threaten fundamental change in Washington, even though he hails from the outré state of Utah, which for most of the Eastern Establishment is barely America at all, except for the Sundance Film Festival, the cultural Guantanamo Bay of the Bee Hive state.

Morgen Richmond of the sprightly Verum Serum blog put together this terrific faux-campaign ad detailing everything that is wrong with Huntsman (the rhino at the very beginning is a nice touch), from his support for cap and trade and the whole climate claptrap generally, to his embrace of universal health care as “a right,” culminating in his boast of being different from “a traditional Republican.” Huntsman has managed the dubious achievement of having “grown in office” without even going to Washington.

The very first time I ever heard of Huntsman was way back in 1999, when I was supposed to debate him in Sun Valley on the subject of “smart growth,” which was the environmental crusade of that time against “urban sprawl.” At that time Huntsman was still in the private sector in Utah, but he was an enthusiast of “smart growth,” which is a euphemism for giving government bureaucrats more planning power over private property and economic development. Did Utah suffer from urban sprawl? I planned to point out that less than 2 percent of Utah was developed, and that two-thirds of the state still fit the Census Bureau’s year 1900 density definition of “frontier.” But Huntsman cancelled out of the debate at the last minute. (By the way, it is worth noting in passing that the whole “smart growth” enthusiasm of the late 1990s and early 2000s played its own role in the housing bubble, which the great analyst Wendell Cox explains in a new paper. NB: Randall O’Toole of the Cato Institute has also made this case with equal persuasion.)

Back around 2006, a year after Huntsman became governor of Utah, I saw him up close in Pebble Beach, at a swanky gathering of top California Republican donors. (I was there to talk about Reagan.) I wondered why the governor of Utah would want to be talking to a group of California Republican donors, but five minutes into the speech it became obvious: this man intends to run for President some day, and he’s getting started early on the networking part of the enterprise.

He’s a very smooth speaker, exuding confidence and energy. The one fully conservative trait on display–in fact the main subject of his speech–was school choice. He’s strongly for it, and gave a compelling case for it and his attempts to get it across the goal line in Utah. But I wonder if his enthusiasm for school choice has less to do with latent conservative principle and more to do with Utah’s Mormonism, which is more naturally hostile to the secularism of contemporary public education than most denominations. (I’d argue that Mormons run the world’s only truly successful private welfare state–a subject that fascinated the late Edward Banfield. But that’s a subject for another day.)

Otherwise he appears even more technocratic than Romney. Is there really room in the Republican nominating process for two Mormon technocrats? The rivalry between these two men could get interesting.

UPDATE: I filed this original post before noting George Will’s column about Huntsman today. (I left for an early breakfast meeting without even glancing at my Washington Post.) Will makes the best case for some of Huntsman’s conservative positions, especially his embrace of the Ryan plan, and his opposition to ethanol subsidies (which, I predict, will become the required position for all GOP candidates before this is all over). Huntsman’s foreign policy views, Will thinks, may be a little more dodgy, though Will clearly sympathizes with them. But Will concludes:

So it is difficult to chart Huntsman’s path to the Republicans’ Tampa convention through a nominating electorate that is understandably furious about Obama’s demonstrably imprudent and constitutionally dubious domestic policies. Even if that electorate approves Huntsman’s un-Obamalike health-care reforms in Utah and forgives his flirtation with a fanciful climate-change regime among Western states, he faces the worthy but daunting challenge of bringing Tea Party Republicans — disproportionately important in the nominating process — to a boil about foreign policy.

I think Will underestimates here the dislike of our foreign commitments among Tea Party types. There may be more traction to be had here, except that Ron Paul may have this segment of the right-leaning vote cornered.

Read more here.