Some of the people rounded up and sent to Gitmo weren’t hard-core terrorists and 9/11 conspirators. Some were low-level soldiers caught up at the beginning of the war. Have we damaged and angered those we release to such an extent that if they weren’t terrorists before, they are now?
A little more than two years after his release from the Guantanamo Bay military prison, Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi knelt in front of a white wall, clutched the upturned barrel of an AK-47 rifle and delivered a message before a video camera. […] “Praise be unto God, who evacuated me from Guantanamo prison and joined me with the Islamic State of Iraq,” he intoned. As the camera’s light cast an outsize shadow behind his head, he wagged his finger and issued a vow: “We are going, with permission from God, to God — glory be unto him. We will enter the nests of apostasy.”
At 6:15 a.m. on March 23, 2008, not long after making the video, Ajmi drove a pickup truck filled with 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives, hidden in what appeared to be white flour sacks, onto an Iraqi army base outside Mosul. He barreled though the entrance checkpoint and past a fusillade of gunfire from the sentries, shielded by bulletproof glass and makeshift armor welded to the cab.
[…]
Since his death, U.S. intelligence agencies have sought to determine when Ajmi became a hard-core jihadist. Was it in the late 1990s, when he came under the sway of a radical preacher while serving in the Kuwaiti army? Was it in 2001, when he allegedly joined the Taliban? Was it upon his release in 2005, when extremists back home celebrated him as the “Lion of Guantanamo”?Or is the answer potentially more alarming: Was his descent into unrepentant radicalism an unintended consequence of his incarceration?
[…]
As Wilner learned more about Ajmi’s story, he became convinced that he never should have been sent to Guantanamo. “This was a kid who could be nothing more than a lowly foot soldier. He was clearly not a leader or a planner or anything else like that,” the lawyer said. “He struck me as one of the least dangerous people I’d seen at Gitmo.”
I see the majority of posters here are of the belief that one should never release prisoners of any kind. Talk about crowded prisons!
Murder: Life!
Theft: Life!
Taking drugs: Life!
Jaywalking: Life!
We already imprison more of our own population than any other country in the world, including Russia and China. (Well over one million now — more than some states or even whole countries.)
Yes, kiddies, I can still remember when the U.S. was a cool place to live…
Now that the “discussion” has devolved into the same old polarized disagreement, I refer you to the third installment of the Bourne trilogy. What radical step was taken to get David Webb to abandon his identity and become a killer?
*SPOILER ALERT*
What? You haven’t seen a film released two years ago? OK, then, bail out now.
Torture. They waterboarded him until he said “yes, I’ll kill strangers, whether or not I know they’re guilty.”
Hell, yes, survivors of torture become the sworn enemies for life of whomever they think is connected to the people who tortured them. Anyone here ever been tortured? Not likely. I’m here to tell you, it never goes away. I don’t mean nightmares or weird visions that show up out of nowhere. I mean every day, nearly every hour, it’s there. Unforgettable. I’ve tried therapy, hypnosis, and quite a few unsanctioned cures. I was held for two years and four days, 35 years ago, and it might as well have been last week. The lingering physical ailments are nothing compared to the memories that are still disturbing. When you’ve seen a human face, heard a human voice, felt a human touch deliberately trying to hurt you, every hour of every day, after a month it’s going to stay with you. You look at everyone differently, once you’ve learned that people are capable of cruelty. You can even remember how some of the torturers got better at it, how they were tentative at first, and became confident, even skilled.
As for you idiots who’ve forgotten about the AMERICAN standard, “Innocent until proven guilty,” you ought to go and live in a country where the authorities literally round up people off the street and throw them in jail with no rights, formal charges, or legal representation. It must be comfortable and convenient for you to presume that everyone held at a secret prison is guilty.
Yeah. It’s a big, steaming mess. It’s not a good idea to simply release the people who’ve been tortured on our behalf. Everyone now knows without a doubt that these United States has made serious mistakes. Oh, you didn’t do it personally? Sorry, citizen. War is Hell, and it’s waged against citizens, not government officials. Your taxes pay for lush accommodations and excellent security for those disconnected fools. Oh, that’s just the formally declared flavor of war. Think for a little bit about terrorist techniques, the ones outside of war. Now think about the period of time that the US of A has been using these techniques in covert operations. Security is an illusion, nothing more.
I’m here to tell you, the damage from 9/11 goes far deeper than a couple of tall buildings.
Drugs are about 20% of the prison population. I see the people who support releasing Guantanamo guys really just want to release every prisoner.
#32 my mistake. The Taliban were not given POW status, they were given ‘Geneva Convention status’. It was decided they would be given the protections of the Geneva Conventions. However, they are still classified as detainees.