eskimo said:
Weren't most gitmos simply scooped up from Afghanistan? I mean, to me there's an enormous difference between joining the taliban there and plotting to blow a plane up here. The latter are a threat to our security, I don't know about the former. Anyway, I think everyone deserves a trial, of course this is troublesome when you don't have any evidence but rather simly buy them by the truckload. Wanting them tortured to death (or what you meant by the saudis knowing how to deal with them) sounds rather sick to me.
What you think I think is mildly insulting.. but I will live. For what possible reason would released detainees be tortured, after all these years incarcerated? Just for the sport? Killing them might be more efficient than than waiting for them to attack again, but that is not very sporting either.
Just to clear up what I meant by my comment, is that the Saudis, being neighbors of yemen, and actively engaged with them in fighting along their border, will not underestimate the threat these people could pose. Likewise, they should be better equipped that westerners to separate the bad asses, from the wannabees, and act accordingly. No, not torture and dismemberment... Re-education, but not in the North Korean sense of reeducation. Rehabilitation that actually works, not that I know how to do that.. But definitely not wide scale catch and release, like turning them over to yemen would be. Some of these people are still potentially dangerous. If they have all been radicalized by their detention as some here suggest, then they all are dangerous.
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I believe some of them may have been collected from Pakistan too, but came from several different countries originally.. The center of Alkeida activity is in the vague border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But many different radical groups gravitate to that region for training and education. These days with the Pakistan military cleaning up their north, and more attention from us in Afghanistan, it looks like Yemen is becoming a new destination for wannabees. While the Pakistani's did just detain 5 or 6 US citizens who showed their wannabee ass by trying to hook up with terrorists in Pakistan (without their parents permission).
The individuals harvested by paying a bounty are only a fraction of the people who entered GITMO. The lesser threats have been released already, when possible. A number of countries don't want their people back, or like in the case of China, they won't promise not to mistreat them upon repatriation.
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I have little love for the Saudis. Their years of appeasing the more radical elements among themselves, who have been teaching hate and jihad in Saudi funded madrassas' (religious schools) there and around the world, have created a ticking time bomb fueling this whole mess.
To repeat, the Saudis are who operated the detainee rehabilitation experiment. They also have their own home grown candidates to re-school. The fact that this apparently failed (for at least some), doesn't detract from the reality that they are the world experts on attempting to find humane ways to deal with these combatants, "and' that does not create a future risk threat to all of us.
It is both common practice and common sense to hold combatants (without habeous corpus) until hostilities cease. If anybody thinks this is over, I will respectfully (but not with much respect) disagree. Unilaterally declaring that there is no terror war, does not seem to have been adequate. I hope we don't surrender. :
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The UK has made some movements toward establishing Sharia courts, under the mechanism of civil arbitration tribunals. I hope they know what they are doing. I would be nervous about that.
Please think for yourselves, but at least try to get a little better informed. This has been playing out for years. It is remarkable that a failed act here generates such a disproportionate response in the press compared to all the people dying every day by terrorist hands around the world, but for those who still don't quite get it, this was all about taking the fight to them where they are, so they can't take it here.
This is all within their ability to stop in an instant, just stop blowing up innocent civilians in sundry countries. Maybe that should be their new year's resolution. 8)
JR
