Tuesday, March 10, 2009  One intelligence official told the Associated Press that Rasoul’s stated mission is to counter the U.S. troop surge.

Although the militant detainees who have resurfaced were released under the Bush administration, the revelation underscores the Obama administration’s dilemma in moving to close the detention camp at Guantanamo and figuring out what to do with the nearly 250 prisoners who remain there.

In one of his first acts in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the jail next year. The order also convened a task force that will determine how to handle remaining detainees, who could be transferred to other U.S. detention facilities for trial, transferred to foreign nations for legal proceedings or freed.

More than 800 prisoners have been imprisoned at Guantanamo; only a handful have been charged. About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.

A Pentagon tally of the detainees released show that 122 were transferred from Guantanamo in 2007, more than any other year.

The Pentagon’s preferred option is to hand them over to their home governments for imprisonment. But the Defense Intelligence Agency’s growing list of former prisoners that have rejoined the fight shows that, in some cases, that system does not work.

According to the Pentagon, at least 18 former Guantanamo detainees have “returned to the fight” and 43 others are suspected of resuming terrorist activities. The Pentagon has declined to provide a complete list of the former prisoners they suspect are now on the battlefield.

According to case documents assembled by the U.S. military for a 2005 review of Rasoul’s combatant status at Guantanamo, the Afghan was captured in 2001 in Konduz.

Armed with a gun and sitting in the car of an alleged Taliban leader, Rasoul insisted to American authorities he was forced to carry the gun by the Taliban. Rasoul told the tribunal in 2005 that in fact he had surrendered with other Taliban members to the Northern Alliance in Konduz on Dec. 12, 2001.

The Northern Alliance was involved in a protracted civil war with the Taliban, and was allied with U.S. forces in the October 2001 invasion.

Rasoul told the tribunal that he and others were then handed over to the Americans for bounties.

According to the U.S. documents, Rasoul was conscripted into the Taliban in 1995, and was seriously wounded in a bombing in 1997. He returned to the Taliban in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 1999.

Rasoul, who hailed from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan— a Taliban stronghold— never attended a Taliban or al-Qaida training camp. A key piece of evidence against him was that he was captured with two Casio watches similar to those used in al-Qaida bombings. He said he was holding the watches for a Taliban member who lacked pockets.

He told the tribunal that he intended to return to a peaceful life in Afghanistan.

“I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family,” he said, according to a U.S. military transcript of the hearing.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said Tuesday that at least two Saudi detainees also turned up recently as members of al-Qaida in Yemen after they were released from Guantanamo. The Saudis had been handed over by the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, where they were supposedly rehabilitated as part of a Saudi program to reform extremists.

The Bush administration’s decision to transfer militants to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation “doesn’t inspire confidence,” Blair said.

But he told the House Intelligence Committee last month that the prison must be closed because of the damage it has done to America’s reputation. It is too powerful a negative symbol to remain open, he said.

The jail at the U.S. base in Cuba, created by the Bush administration in 2002, has been criticized worldwide for allegations of abuse of prisoners and their legal status.

WASHINGTON —  The Taliban’s new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison.

U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that Pentagon and intelligence officials say is used by a Taliban leader who is in charge of operations against U.S. and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan.

The officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to release the information, said Rasoul has joined a growing faction of former Guantanamo prisoners who have rejoined militant groups and taken action against U.S. interests. Pentagon officials have said that as many as 60 former detainees have resurfaced on foreign battlefields.

Pentagon and intelligence officials said Rasoul has emerged as a key militant figure in southern Afghanistan, where violence has been spiking in the last year. Thousands of U.S. troops are preparing to deploy there to fight resurgent Taliban forces.

An Arab Christian woman and Middle East expert says she isn’t surprised at a recently released report that Barack Obama received 90-percent support from Muslim-American voters in the recent presidential election.

The American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, or AMT, is an umbrella organization that includes 11 other Islamic groups, including the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. Recently they gathered at the National Press Club to report on the electoral preferences of Muslim voters and their level of participation.
 
AMT commissioned a poll which revealed almost 90 percent of Muslims supported Barack Obama, while only two percent supported John McCain. Brigitte Gabriel is founder and president of ACT! for America and the author of They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It. She says Muslim voters overlooked key differences they had with Obama on social issues — like abortion and marriage.
 
“They are willing overlook where he stands on abortion, where he stands on gay marriage and the like because as far as Muslims in America are concerned, they want to advance the cause of Islam in the United States,” she contends. “They are not worried how long it’s going to take or who’s going to help them facilitate it.”
 
Muslim voters, adds Gabriel, also supported Obama for another reason. “They know that Obama is going to be softer on the War on Terror. After all, vice president-(elect) Biden doesn’t even believe we have a war on terror,” she concludes. “He believes this is all a concoction of the Bush administration to basically enforce our opinion on the Middle East. So this is why Muslims in America would want to support Obama.”
 
Gabriel says the reports of secret meetings between Obama officials and the terrorist group Hamas give her pause about what kind of foreign policy the president-elect might pursue when he takes office in January.

By William Warren

Bill Ayers’ “Fugitive Days” are over.

With the election passed and Barack Obama’s presidency assured, the unrepentant terrorist has emerged from his cave and is now out in the open, basking in the sunlight like the scaly reptile he is—no offense to reptiles.

Having sequestered himself from the media since being made an issue in a Clinton-Obama primary debate, Bill Ayers decided to clear the air on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in a Friday interview with Chris Cuomo. And although it’s ironic the media has decided that now is a good time to truly probe Mr. Ayers, Chris Cuomo deserves credit for asking the Chicago radical the tough questions—questions of the kind Mr. Obama was fortunate never to have faced.

What Mr. Ayers revealed—with thanks to the persistent goading of Mr. Cuomo—is what ALG News has argued for months. Yes, President-elect Obama and Ayers are friends. In fact, Ayers, in the new afterword of his “Fugitive Days” memoir, even refers to the President-elect as a “family friend”…a significantly weightier title than the “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” title Mr. Obama assigned to Ayers.

One can assume, therefore, that Ayers, Ayers’ even more despicable wife Bernadine Dohrn, Barack and Michelle Obama have all been “palling around together” the way good family friends do.

Nevertheless, Mr. Ayers tried his best to downplay his familial, neighborly and business friendship with Obama, spending more time promoting the timely reissue of his “Fugitive Days” memoir—an interesting move coming from a man who’s dedicated his life to the destruction of the “evil” capitalist system.

Speaking of his memoir, Ayers urged that his writings about his violent past are “more relevant now” with America in the middle of two wars—three by Ayers’ count if you include the Arab-Israeli conflict—and that the same vigilance against the “violent terrorist war” in Vietnam ought to be applied today.

So when Ayers reiterates that he doesn’t regret setting bombs and “didn’t do enough” in the 1960s and 70s and then goes on to say we aren’t doing enough today to stop America’s wars, what, in Ayers’ opinion, would be enough? Is he advocating yet more terrorism?

Perhaps he is hopeful that a President Obama will just take care of it.

All in all, with Mr. Obama’s victory secure, Bill Ayers does appear comfortable enough to publically say and do things he otherwise wouldn’t even consider. The nation’s selection of Mr. Obama has been the green light for Ayers’ big media debut. It seems Vladimir Putin wasn’t the only one emboldened by November 4th’s news.

And the list goes on.

Last week, for example, the AP ran a story in which Louis Farrakhan, the world-renowned racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader, heaped praises upon the new President-elect. As Farrakhan said in a November 9th sermon:

“For nine months, I kept quiet because I saw that the good words that I spoke about this beautiful young man at our Saviours’ Day convention and the way they were misused. I decided it would be better for me to just be quiet rather than be drawn into the controversy that was swirling around his pastor, Father Pfleger, and others. I feel freer today to say the things that are in my heart.”

So now Mr. Farrakhan feels free to speak up? What else might Mr. Farrakhan have to say now that he has been liberated?

Ironically enough, on November 8th, a mere four days after the election and a day before Mr. Farrakhan gave his “freer” sermon, Bernadine Dohrn and a panel of other 1960s radicals met in Manhattan to discuss President-elect Obama and the role of social activism. As the following New York Times article describes:

“Though President-elect Barack Obama was not a product of the antiwar movement 40 years ago, the panelists described him as a benefactor of its transformations and predicted he would be the inspiration for social movements.”

So, according to the panel, Barack Obama is a “benefactor” of Ayers’ and Dohrn’s bomb-throwing, car-burning, cop-cursing, communist-sympathizing and window-smashing efforts. How very reassuring. Thanks for clearing that up.

So now that Ayers, Farrakhan, Dohrn and other radicals have reared their ugly heads, what other notorious and controversial figures will feel encouraged to speak up and voice both their radical views and their simultaneous support for President-elect Barack Obama? What other fugitive-types will feel more at home now that the election is over?

Had Dohrn and the rest of these radicals held such a panel praising Mr. Obama the weekend before Election Day, perhaps the outcome may have been different. The swarm of radicals coming out of the woodwork may have dismayed a voter or two. Maybe.

Or, perhaps we are experiencing the radicalization of mainstream politics. If so, will mainstream Americans become the new “radicals”?

Regardless, hopefully mainstream Americans can muster the courage to “do enough” to send Ayers and all his radical “family friends” back to the cave from which they crawled—or at least put them back on the lam with the rest of the remaining fugitives.

William Warren is a contributing editor of ALG News Bureau.

We post this, however, for the larger point.  Why don’t we all appreciate our real “heroes”, who protect us from The Caliphate, who are under marching orders direct from the Koran, to kill us if we do not convert to the Muslim religion?  How many of them would be here in America blowing us and our children up at restaurants and/or taking out a city or three, if they wouldn’t have killed them in Iraq?  In a free country it is impossible to completely stop them from coming over here.

We all need to think about and appreciate the work, service and sacrifice our soldiers made to keep us safe and free in these Caliphate troubled times!

Guest column: Mr. Favre, take time to meet a real hero

Wesley Emch of Brimfield, Ohio, describes himself as the “proud father of a Devil Doc.” His son, Hospitalman Lucas Emch, was a hospital corpsman assigned to 1st Marine Logistics Group, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

algebra said:Karl, I support Paul and Baldwin because of their non interventionism policies, and I am aware of the many factions of Islam.

I also believe, if we have a dirty bomb detinated in our country, it will come from a legal middleastern immigrant, or one that simply walked across our open borders.

Shouldn’t secure borders be our first line of defense. Isn’t it unconstutional of our president not to protect us from invasion across our borders?

Yes, we must secure our borders and THE FENCE MUST BE BUILT to the full extent of the specifications!  Yes, but at the same time you need to realize that a FREE country means that anybody who hasn’t been detected of doing something wrong, can simply fly or voyage into our country.  How are you going to stop that?  And, in a FREE country, you will not be able to stop the free flow of goods completely enough to prevent WMD of various types from coming into our country.

There are a lot of educated Mufsiduns who can fly into our country on airliners any day of the week.  As long as we have a ‘FREE’ country, this can never ever be stopped.  That is why the Mufsidun Mosquito Magnet in Iraq has worked so well.  There is absolutely no way that several hundred, at least, of the tens of thousands of Mufsiduns that have been killed by our soldiers wouldn’t have been here and knocked off the lives of an entire population of a city by something like 15 – 20 canisters of chemical weapons going off simutaineously in a major city.  I know this because that is what it says in the Koran they have to do if they want to have a “good time” in heaven.  They “have to” take over the world.  The U.S. Government and more importantly us INDIVIDUALLY are standing in their way like a giant Red Wood mountain.  To accomplish their mission they have to knock us INDIVIDUALS of FREEDOM, off.  For we INDIVIDUALS, will always fight, the concept of The Caliphate and their one world theocracy government, just as many of us here at FS are intent on fighting the ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT of THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM and their Club – The Trilateral Commission.

Two battle fronts.  Remember TWO, battle fronts, TWO enemies.  Don’t take your eye off of the other enemy or they will flank us!