Bermuda On The Hot Seat
Before we get to the meat and potatoes of this topic, here is the light side. This is a parody song I made based on the Beach Boys song "Kokomo" to highlight the lunacy of the Obama Administration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNRU_syEkq4
For those who have been sleeping under a rock, President Obama decided to move four of the Uighurs formerly detained at Guantanamo Bay to Bermuda. The Bermuda Government accepted them in a violation of protocol, and their Minister of Education sounds like he took a page from the Obama Administration when he made the following statement.
"We'll take care of protocol later ... It's too late to follow protocol,"
The decision is not going over well in Bermuda, where people don't have a Messiah to bow down to at the helm of their Government. Donte Hunt, leader of the Minority Party in Bermuda, had the following to say. (same link as above)
"What in the world does that mean? Vetted? That's a loaded word," Hunt said. "Does vetting mean that these gentlemen have gone through an extensive psychological review? Was there time spent with a psychologist, someone with the means to understand their background, and how they will react in civilized environments?"
Hunt added that while the Uighurs were declared non-combatants to the U.S. government, "they were combatants by their own admission to the Chinese government. At least one of them said they received training to fight against the Chinese government ... By their own admission.
"Do we understand the Chinese thought and possible response?" he asked.
President Obama has been altogether typical in this action, hiding his intentions both from our Congress and the British Government, who is in charge of Bermuda. What was he saying about transparency again? Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband has filed a complaint with the State Department over the back handed way this Administration went about the deal. He also criticized Bermuda Government for making the decision without British consultation. In saying that 1,000 residents of Bermuda came out to protest the decision, it should be noted that the Bermuda population is roughly 66,000.
It should also be noted that, while our Government has determined that they have committed no crimes against us, that does not make them stand-up people. The following report details what these men were doing in Afghanistan.
The Uighur detainees admitted their ties to Haq and Mahsum during their testimony at combatant status review tribunals (CSRT) at Guantánamo. The Uighurs frequently professed their innocence, claiming that they were not targeting Americans and denying that they had anything to do with al Qaeda or the Taliban. But in the context of their denials the Uighur detainees also admitted to training at a terrorist camp in the Tora Bora Mountains. That camp was run by Abdul Haq and Hassan Mahsum, and was most likely supported by al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The UN designation notes that Haq is "involved in fundraising and recruitment for" the ETIP/ETIM. This is consistent with the accounts offered by the Uighur detainees. For example, current detainee Bahtiyar Mahnut explained Abdul Haq’s role during one of his CSRT sessions at Guantánamo. Mahnut lived at the ETIP/ETIM’s Tora Bora training camp for several months in 2001, until the American bombing campaign forced him and his fellow Uighurs to flee.
"The person running the camp was named Abdul Haq, and he was a Uighur," Mahnut said. Haq oversaw Mahnut’s integration into the ETIP/ETIM’s training program. Mahnut explained:
"I trained on the AK-47 and physical fitness activities. The first day I came to the camp, Abdul Haq told me that I had to give him my passport and whenever I wanted to leave I could ask for it back. He then took my passport from me. Our clothing and baggage was inside the house at the time. We left everything in the house when we left."The scenario described by Mahnut is consistent with the modus operandi of al Qaeda and the Taliban. New recruits are frequently commanded to turn over their passports and other identifying information. They then take on a new identity as a jihadist committed to the terrorists’ uncompromising ideology. Some of the Uighur detainees held at Gitmo have confirmed that they changed names upon their arrival in Afghanistan.
On a personal note, I feel the need to ask the Obama Administration for a clarification here. Was it not your claim that GITMO was being used as a tool for terrorist recruitment? What, pray tell, do you suppose that this will do to recruitment efforts? Train with Al Qaeda for Jihad, get picked up on the battlefield, do a little time in GITMO, then retire to a tropical paradise. Nice. Incompetence to this degree should be criminal.
