Today Andrew McCarthy who spent more than two decades at the Department of Justice and became an expert on terrorism, told Attorney General Eric Holder that he will not help them with Obama’s planned strategy to release Guantanamo Bay prisoners by year’s end. Writing at National Review Online today, McCarthy says:
I did something today that I’ve never done before. The Department of Justice, which I proudly served for a quarter century as an assistant U.S. attorney and a deputy U.S. marshal, asked me for help, and I declined. Actually, what I declined to do was attend a meeting. My hope is that the dissent I am registering — to the administration’s disastrous policies of releasing trained terrorists and threatening prosecution against government lawyers — will help the department and the Obama administration, even if they don’t want to hear it.
At the start of his term, President Obama directed Attorney General Eric Holder to head up the President’s Detention Policy Task Force to study detention, trial, and other issues relating to alien enemy combatants — though that venerable law-of-war term has been purged in favor of “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” The attorney general has assigned lawyers in the department’s Counterterrorism Division to organize the effort. Those lawyers invited me, among other former and current prosecutors experienced in terrorism and national-security matters, to attend a roundtable session next week, to sort through the vexing legal challenges of modern international terrorism.
Read on.
McCarthy makes two important points. He asks, if he is on the Task Force and makes legal recommendations that are not favorable to the Administration, might he then be in legal jeopardy just as those Bush Administration lawyers may now be over their recommendations on interrogation tactics following 9/11.
Is it the Delphi Technique?
And, then he points out that Obama has already declared that the Gitmo Detainees will be moved or freed later this year anyway, so why be on a Task Force and be nothing more than a rubber stamp for Obama and Holder. This is a tried and true strategy of ‘Progressives’, I know because I have seen it first hand, up close and personal. The powers that be have already made their decision, but to give it the patina of a bipartisan and comprehensive strategy, they get a variety of people to sit on a task force then lead the task force to a predetermined conclusion. Everyone walks away thinking they had a hand in the decision. The strategy was probably developed within the framework of the Dephi Techinque, more details on it here. Remember Obama has already used the strategy in a couple of meetings. Good for you, Mr. McCarthy for getting it, and saying, “no!”
Below are excerpts from McCarthy’s letter to Holder today.
Released Gitmo Prisoners have returned to Jihad:
There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.
The decision has already been made. I say let Obama now take ownership.
The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.
The Uighers are coming to your neighborhood. What do you think the chances are that they will settle down to life in an American suburb: mowing the grass, washing the car, walking the dog? Oh, silly me, leave the dog out.
Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.
If released here, the Chinese Muslims will be given the same rights and privileges as refugees and asylees. One of the Top Ten volags will get the contract to resettle them, and I bet there will even be competition among the NGO’s for the honor of getting these famous terrorists as “clients.” They will get a federally subsidized apartment, a case worker to help them find a job, food stamps, health screening, and English lessons among other things.
But beware, don’t let them get a look at any women with bare arms, Michelle included.
All of our posts on the Gitmo guys are here.