Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Michigan needs some cash, just like other states. And a couple of lawmakers there think they can bank of bringing terrorists to their state. Rep. Bart Stupak wrote a letter to President Obama suggesting that the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay be housed in a shuttered state prison.

Here’s the story from the Chicago Tribune:

MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. - U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak wants to house Guantanamo Bay detainees at an abandoned prison in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but said Friday he would not pursue the matter without broad support from other officeholders in the state.

Stupak, a Menominee Democrat, sent President Obama a letter in February that suggested transferring the detainees to Camp Manistique in Schoolcraft County. The state prison closed in 2007 because of budget cuts.

Former Gov. John Engler, a Republican, also suggested the U.P. as a suitable location during a meeting with GOP legislators this month. He described it as an innovative way to attract federal money and reduce the state’s chronic budget deficit.

But other officeholders in Michigan have criticized the proposal, including U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor next year.

During a debate Thursday on Mackinac Island, Hoekstra said it was “a really bad idea ... balancing Michigan’s budget on the premise of bringing 240 of the most dangerous people in the world to the Upper Peninsula.”

Two other Republican candidates, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Attorney General Mike Cox, also opposed the idea. State Sen. Tom George, a Republican, and Democratic candidate Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith said it was worth considering.

“I don’t think Gov. Engler was talking about just releasing (the detainees) into the woods,” said George, of Kalamazoo County’s Texas Township.

President Obama has pledged to close the Guantanamo prison, a target of human rights activists around the world. But finding a place to send the remaining inmates, detained on battlefields since the 2001 terrorist attacks, is proving difficult. Officials in a number of states have said they don’t want to host the detainees.

In his Feb. 4 letter, Stupak said the 30-acre Camp Manistique grounds were well-maintained and near a railroad spur. He described the facility, which has a capacity of 216 inmates, as “a competitive choice.”

Stupak said Friday he had sent the letter at the urging of several constituents but wanted backing from local and state officials, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Michigan Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, before stepping up his efforts.

“Without a broad base of support I will not push for further consideration of Camp Manistique or other sites in the Upper Peninsula to house detainees,” Stupak said.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said, “It is not something we are pursuing.”

Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Stupak either was “carrying water for his party’s unpopular policy, or he is completely out of touch with the Michigan families whose safety would be threatened if these dangerous terrorists were held in their communities.”

Mr. Stupak better read up on some of those Gitmo prisoners.

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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Newt Gingrich had a Op piece on the Washington Examiner today and I just really liked it a lot. His approach to the whole issue of Gitmo, I think, is more courageous and focuses more on the real national security issues than many of the other gitmo proponents I have seen.

A lot of people seem to focus on “if you close gitmo, where do you put the terrorists” which is fine, its a legitimate argument and is very compelling for lots of congresspeople whose constituents woudl be in danger if you stick these known terrorists into their local prison or military base.

but I think a lot of people are focusing on the arguments against bringing terrorists here rather than the arguments for keeping Gitmo open. Newt Gingrich makes a few key points about this in the article.

I like how he calls out Obama’s arguments for closing it -

On the first point, President Obama has simply asserted – without offering any evidence – that Guantanamo Bay has made America less safe by luring new recruits to jihad.  In his speech at the National Archives last week, President Obama claimed that “the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained” and backed up his assertion with…nothing.  The administration’s standard of proof, high when it comes to demanding evidence that enhanced interrogation techniques prevented terrorism, vanishes when it comes to Guantanamo Bay fueling terrorism.

He goes on to outline a danger in closing Gitmo that I have not seen properly articulated by many other commentators. The fact that closing it would seem like retreating on another front in the war on terror...which would indeed embolden the terrorists.

Closing Gitmo is more likely to have the opposite result:  Convincing Bin Laden and his allies, once again, that the United States is a “paper tiger” that lacks the political will for the long war against radical Islam.  It will bring more terrorists to the fight, not fewer.

It would be like the opposite effect of The Surge in Iraq. Because of the surge, that is- sending in MORE troops - the terrorists knew they could not just wait out the United States until we got tired and left, allowing them to take over. They knew, because we were doubling-down, that America was there to win and was not going to accept defeat… and as a result Al Qaeda lost the support of the local population who began to side with the Sons of Iraq, the US Army and the Iraqi Army.

If we had done the opposite and withdrawn a Combat Brigade or two, it would have seemed like Al Qaeda was making progress and that would be a recruiting tool for them.

The administration must face facts:  It’s not Guantanamo Bay that irritates the international left, it’s the very fact that the United States has chosen to fight, rather than accommodate, the jihadist wing of Islam

FULL LINK HERE: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Newt-Gingrich/Mr-President-Keep-Gitmo-open-46455392.html

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
Permalink

N. Korea’s little dictator has been saber rattling - throwing an international hissy fit with his missiles - and the United States has basically stood by and yawned. But the Army says the wars in Irag and AFghanistan won’t slow them down if N. Korea decides to step up its agression.

The AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States could fight an old-fashioned war against North Korea if necessary, even while newer forms of conflict against terrorists and extremists continue, the Army’s top officer said Thursday.

Asked whether the United States would be prepared to fight if war broke out between South Korea and North Korea, Gen. George Casey replied, “The short answer is yes,” then added that “it would probably take us a little bit longer to shift gears” away from the type of counterinsurgency fighting that now occupies the Army.

Casey said his usual rubric for how long it would take the Army to gear up for a new “conventional” war is about 90 days. That doesn’t mean it would take 90 days for the U.S. to effectively fight the North’s million-man army, he said.

“We’d move forces as rapidly as we could get them prepared,” Casey said.

North Korea has threatened war following condemnation of its underground nuclear test this week, and the United States has a long-term commitment to South Korea’s defense.

“This is a combat-seasoned force” that can pivot quickly, Casey said.

In other words: Don’t push your luck shorty.
Our men and women in uniform are the best in the world and, despite what some nuts around the world believe, our technology and determination will win every time.

The Army’s chief of staff also suggested that war with the nuclear-armed North might not be the old-style land war that U.S. forces stationed in South Korea were envisioned to fight. He did not elaborate, but he was presumably referring to the possibility that the North might use or threaten to use its proven nuclear capability.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Casey focused on his plans to rearrange the Army around the “reality scenario” of sustained counterterrorism conflict. The reality of permanent war means the United States should have 10 Army brigades and Marine Corps regiments available for overseas conflict worldwide, he said.

“It’s not just Iraq and Afghanistan,” Casey said. Including Iraq in his contingency planning is not to say that the United States won’t honor its agreement with Iraq to pull forces from the country by 2012, he said.

“We will execute the draw down plan that has been executed between our governments,” he said.

“I don’t know that anyone knows what the security relationship and force level will be, if there are any, in Iraq,” after the scheduled withdrawal of combat forces,” he added. “That’s very much to be determined.”

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Amabassadors from 27 European nations say that America must take primary responsibility for the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and house them in the U.S. The group also contends that America must be more like Europe when it comes to human rights.

Here’s the story from the AFB:

BRUSSELS (AFP) — European officials sought Wednesday to pressure the US into accepting Guantanamo Bay detainees on its own territory amid negotiations over rules governing their release overseas, diplomats said.

Ambassadors from the 27 European Union nations discussed for the first time what they want to see included in a joint EU-US declaration being drawn up, which also included the thorny issue of United States compensation.

The Czech EU presidency was scheduled to discuss the text with US officials at a video conference in the evening ahead of EU interior ministers addressing the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg next week.

The goal is “to obtain guarantees from the US” that it is abandoning the former Bush administration’s excesses in the war against terror and moving closer to a “more European” approach which better respects human rights, one European source said.

A draft of the EU-US declaration presented by the Czech EU presidency to its fellow member states stresses that “the EU and the US share fundamental values of freedom, democracy, respect for human right and the rule of law.

“We reaffirm that the primary responsibility for closing Guantanamo and finding residence for the former detainees rests with the United States.

“We take note that the United States recognizes its responsibility to accept certain former detainees who indicate a desire to be admitted,” says the draft text, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

That last phrase poses a problem for Washington, where debate continues on the fate of the Guantanamo detainees. The Americans would prefer that the text remains “open” on this point, one diplomat said.

Any compensation that Washington should offer those freed from the camp in Cuba and bound for Europe also remains a problem, he added.

Amongst themselves the Europeans are split over the timing of the declaration’s release, according to diplomatic sources.

France—which last week admitted an Algerian ex-Guantanamo prisoner—along with Spain and Britain, which has allowed in British nationals from the camp, want to seal the text in the coming days.

Other EU nations, notably Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, feel this would be premature while Washington has not yet finalised its own policy on Guantanamo.

The statement also underlines that “decisions on the reception of former detainees and the determination of their legal status fall within the sole responsibility and competence of a receiving EU member state.”

Europe’s no-borders Schengen area—which includes 25 EU and non-EU nations—means a detailed agreement is required among those nations which have signed up for freedom of movement within that area.

The draft mechanism foresees any EU nation accepting a former Guantanamo detainee exchanging information on them with other member states.

Berlin and Vienna want to go further by stipulating that such former detainees are not allowed to circulate freely in the Schengen area, however such an agreement would be “judicially impossible,” the diplomat said.

In general, while European nations back the Obama administration’s plan to close down Guantanamo few are willing to take in those freed from the camp.

Certainly the European Union is offering no overall figure.

Six countries have said they are willing to accept former detainees: Britain, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and, recently, Belgium.

Obama’s plans to shutter the controversial prison camp by January 22, 2010, have faced criticism from both Republicans and his Democratic allies.

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
Permalink

Naysayers, including some left-wing attorneys, have pooh-poohed the statistics showing that some Gitmo prisoners return to terrorism. Well, this week, the Pentagon released hard evidence of the dangerous trend.

FOX News has the story:

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon said Tuesday it has fingerprints, DNA, photos or reliable intelligence to link 27 detainees to the battlefields since their release from the prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

That’s about 5 percent of the 540 terror suspects released from the prison. Another 9 percent of freed Guantanamo detainees are suspected to have rejoined the terror activity. That’s 74 detainees in all.

“What this tells us is, at the end of the day, there are individuals, that if released, will again return to terrorist activities,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday.

Some constitutional lawyers have disputed the data because it is not specific about the evidence used to track the detainees.

The Pentagon said all the detainees captured, and in most cases held, for years at Guantanamo were tied to Al Qaeda, the Taliban or other foreign fighter groups.

Speaking out against the United States, or participating in other anti-U.S. propaganda alone is not considered terrorist activity, the Pentagon said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.