If Guantánamo Closes, use ADAK!

I have to say, I did not agree with Sen. McCain during the 2008 campaign when he took the Guantánamo issue off the table by endorsing candidate Obama’s call to close it. The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is an ideal place to hold military tribunals for jihadists captured on the battlefield. And it would still be the ideal place to hold Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old Nigerian jihadist, who tried to blow up his inbound jet in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Claims that detainees were being mistreated there were false. Capt. Pete Hegseth of Veterans for Freedom served at Guantánamo during the time that Newsweek and other liberal sources were spreading false claims that U.S. guards had “defiled” copies of the Koran. These false reports circulated throughout the world and sparked riots among Muslims.

Capt. Hegseth served a year at “Gitmo” with the New Jersey National Guard. He supervised guards at the detention facilities. He set the record straight. The only time their Korans were besmirched was when the detainees themselves threw human waste on their guards. Gitmo was never Abu Ghraib. No photos of abuse by guards ever came out of Gitmo, because there was none.

But if, after all is said and done, sensible voices in Congress do not prevail, then I have a recommendation for where the detainees should be held and tried. Adak was an important naval installation throughout the Cold War. It’s an island in the central Aleutians, that thousand-mile chain off Alaska.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: Department of Justice, Gitmo, jihadist
Posted Mar 11th 2010 at 5:33 am in Defense, Justice/Legal, News, Obama | 8763891 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kblackwell/2010/03/11/if-guantanamo-closes-use-adak/If+Guant%C3%A1namo+Closes%2C+use+ADAK%212010-03-11+13%3A33%3A24Ken+Blackwell

February Fundraiser for Convicted Terrorist Supporter in Al-Awlaki’s Mosque

On Saturday, February 13,  the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia – about 20 minutes from the White House -  held a fundraiser dinner to raise money for Sabri Benkhala’s various legal appeals.  (They’re holding an even bigger fundraiser in April, which may be attended by some well-known elected officials – more on that later….)  Benkhala is serving a 10-year term in a federal prison for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: abelhaleem hasan abdelrazig ashqar, ahmed omar abu ali, Al Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, Christmas terror attack
Posted Feb 14th 2010 at 4:03 pm in Congress, Culture, Defense, History, Justice/Legal | 74774128 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/fgaffney/2010/02/14/february-fundraiser-for-convicted-terrorist-supporter-in-al-awlakis-mosque/February+Fundraiser+for+Convicted+Terrorist+Supporter+in+Al-Awlaki%27s+Mosque2010-02-15+00%3A03%3A05Frank+Gaffney

The Truth About Fort Hood

Like everybody else, when I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood I immediately rushed to judgment, assuming that anybody opening fire on soldiers on an army base in Texas expected to die. Thus the shooter was either 1) a soldier who had cracked or 2) a priapic jihadist aroused by the thought of all those virgins in paradise. Reasoning that an armed Islamist would struggle to penetrate Fort Hood’s security, I concluded that the shooter was probably an unfortunate soldier gone berserk. A few hours later however I discovered secret option 3) that the “alleged” shooter Nidal Hasan was both a soldier and a jihadi nutbag- an entirely new hybrid, in other words.

Of course, this just goes to show the wisdom of suspending judgment until all the facts are in.  Alas, this lesson was lost on the media, who from the minute news of the shooting broke managed to get almost every detail of the story wrong. At first they told us that the killer was dead; then that there might have been more than one shooter. Soon we knew the suspect’s name, and learned that he was a Muslim convert. Then we learned that he had been Muslim since birth. Then we were told that he might have cracked as a result of exposure to combat, only he had never seen combat. Or maybe it was a response to racism he had experienced, or because as a devout Muslim he was unhappy about being deployed to Afghanistan. (And yet curiously, such a degree of sympathetic understanding was never extended to the likes of Timothy McVeigh or Seung-Hui Cho who also vented their rage by killing strangers.)

Indeed, even Mr. Obama lost his cool, by rushing to the judgment that we were all rushing to judgment, and asking us not to do it. After all Americans do love their pitchforks, don’t they? And when it got out that the suspect was not dead, and that he had shouted Allahu Akbar before opening fire, well- it became all the more important not to rush to judgment, and especially not to assume that the massacre had anything to do with terrorism or Islamic extremism.

Tired of listening to all the non-judgmental judgments, on Saturday I visited Fort Hood for myself.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: fort hood, fort hood shooting, going postal, guns, islamic extremism
Posted Nov 10th 2009 at 6:13 pm in Media Criticism, News, Uncategorized | 2815095 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dkalder/2009/11/10/the-truth-about-fort-hood/The+Truth+About+Fort+Hood2009-11-11+01%3A13%3A11Daniel+Kalder