Keeping our Campaign Promises!

[4est_4est_Gump]

No, this is not about the failed negotiations that led to our troops being out of Iraq by the end of the year or a celebration of Gitmo being closed by December 31, 2009...

Or unemployment being held at 8% or even this:

"As I said, we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year."
Barack Hussein Obama, January, 2011

NOVEMBER 5, 2011 4:00 A.M.
A Terrorist Released
The Obama administration let Binyam Mohamed go.

Binyam Mohamed is back in the news. You may remember him as the al-Qaeda operative who was slated to help would-be “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla conduct a second wave of post-9/11 attacks, targeting American cities. You also may not remember him. After all, the Obama administration quietly released him without charges.

Well, there’s a new chapter in this sordid tale. Mohamed is living large — taxpayer-funded large — in Great Britain. For that, we can thank the Lawyer Left’s stubborn insistence that enemy war criminals are really run-of-the-mill defendants. Actually, make that run-of-the-mill plaintiffs.

Unlike Padilla, who actually got into the United States, only to be apprehended in Chicago, Mohamed was captured in Karachi and turned over to the CIA. (Marc Thiessen provides more details about the case here.) Mohamed was interrogated by American and British intelligence.

The U.S. Defense Department wanted to try Mohamed by military commission. Alas, Britain’s Labour government was deathly afraid of the potential for a trial to expose its complicity in “enhanced interrogation” tactics, which an international propaganda campaign had equated with “torture” — and how about a round of applause for Sen. John McCain and Attorney General Eric Holder for sharpening that arrow in every defense lawyer’s quiver? Like virtually all captured terrorists now do, Mohamed claimed to have been tortured with Saddam-style cruelty. And as is virtually always the case, to call the allegation overblown is not to do it justice. Based on disclosures in various court cases, it is now clear that Mohamed was subjected to stress — essentially, sleep deprivation. Compared to actual torture, that is trivial.

Yet, goaded by its base (the leftist and pro-Islamist contingents that now make up the Occupy London crowd), the Blair-Brown government pleaded with the Obama administration to transfer Mohamed from Gitmo to England. The fact that Mohamed, when he was captured in the midst of plotting to kill thousands of people, had been trying to board a flight to London with a fake British passport was apparently of no import. That he is an Ethiopian national who had no legal right to be repatriated to England did not matter. The same British government that slammed the door on Geert Wilders, an anti-Islamist Dutch parliamentarian, rolled out the welcome mat for the jihadist. President Obama acquiesced, and Mohamed was released — free and clear.

Yes, free and clear. The Obama administration said barely a word about Mohamed’s transfer. Odd, since this was early 2009, right when the administration was gearing up its campaign to give enemy combatants civilian trials, and Mr. Holder was here, there, and everywhere, assuring every ear that there was no terrorism case the justice system could not handle. In fact, the officials involved in the decision to release Mohamed understood full well that he would be neither detained nor prosecuted by British authorities. He was to be freed.

Andrew McCarthy, NRO

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The British government has actually given this al-Qaeda celebrity a cool £1 million payment. Mohamed, you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn, showed his gratitude for being extracted from Gitmo through the intercession of Her Majesty’s government by . . . suing the Brits for being complicit in his “torture.” The £1 million payment is the settlement the government decided it was best to have British taxpayers fork over. Thus, the Daily Mail reports, Mohamed was recently able to plunk down £250,000 for a lovely three-bedroom, two-bathroom terrace house in Norbury, South London — conveniently located near the Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre.

That makes him one of 16 terror suspects who have scored huge financial payouts by simply claiming to have been mistreated by security and intelligence officials. Why does the British government settle rather than fight these claims by jihadists whose goal is to destroy the very system on which they are feasting? Because the Lawyer Left that makes up the transnational progressive vanguard insisted that enemy-combatant terrorists should be seen as civil litigants, and the Brits went along.

Under prevailing justice-system rules, the jihadist gets to sue and, if the British government tries to contest the case, the jihadist is entitled to discovery of all the intelligence about him in British government files. With this lawfare gun at its head, the government’s choice is to tell al-Qaeda what the West knows (and how we know it) or pay pricey settlements. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke explained that Mohamed got £1 million because, if the government hadn’t settled, the case might have cost British taxpayers £50 million.

One unnamed British government official told the Daily Mail, “The danger is that we have become a cashpoint for terrorists.” Gee, you think?

Have a Nice Day!

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

No, this is not about the failed negotiations that led to our troops being out of Iraq by the end of the year or a celebration of Gitmo being closed by December 31, 2009...

Or unemployment being held at 8% or even this:

"As I said, we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year."
Barack Hussein Obama, January, 2011

NOVEMBER 5, 2011 4:00 A.M.
A Terrorist Released
The Obama administration let Binyam Mohamed go.


Andrew McCarthy, NRO

First.. You mean the failed negotiations that lead to our withdrawal at the end of 2011 by President George W. Bush?

The troop withdrawal is required by an agreement which George W. Bush negotiated and entered into with Iraq and which was ratified by the Iraqi Parliament prior to Obama's inauguration.

Second, the Obama administration has been working for months to persuade, pressure and cajole Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain in that country beyond the deadline. The reason they're being withdrawn isn't because Obama insisted on this, but because he tried -- but failed -- to get out of this obligation entered into by his predecessor.

Third, there will still be a very substantial presence in that country, including what McClatchy called a "small army" under the control of the State Department. They will remain indefinitely, and that includes a large number of private contractors.


But that's not what you're talking about..

You're talking about the "propaganda" that equated "enhanced interrogation" with torture. That's not propaganda dumbass, it's called being honest.
What was being done, is by definition, torture. Hell, we prosecuted the japanese for some of the very same methods for war crimes at the Hague.


But don't let anything like fact get in your way of pushing your line of knee-deep bullshit.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Did that effort not fail O'ffended one?




Is Canute not actually able to cane the Tides Foundation into submission?