One of the first executive orders that President Obama gave was to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. There are 245 enemy combatants being held in the prison. Today, 3/13/09 he ordered that the term "enemy combatant" be struck from the vocabulary of his administration when describing those held in the prison. The president ordered the closure to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.".
The point of this blog is only to provide perspective on who we really are holding in this prison. Here are some facts that you will not hear from the mainstream press:
A few points from the book "Inside Gitmo: The True Story behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay"
- A young female Navy medic who was asked to approach a detainee she had treated in the past. The man grabbed her head, smashed her face against the bars, and inflicted such damage that she has had 16 reconstructive plastic surgeries on her face.
- A female nurse who while treating a detainee in the hospital was punched so hard that it fractured her nose. The detainee then shouted that “this infidel whore’s blood has defiled me. Bring me fresh clothes!”
- Guards who have a noxious “cocktail” of feces, urine, semen, spit, and vomit flung into their faces and who then clean themselves, change into fresh uniforms, and resume their duties rather than let their buddies down by taking time off.
- More than 400 attacks on guards and medics occur annually.
- Detainee plots to kill guards, and how one attack came perilously close to success.
- Riots in the hospital in which medical personnel were threatened with death.
- A returning National Guard soldier who is too embarrassed to tell his friends where he served because the reputations of soldiers at Guantanamo has been so slandered.
Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi was captured in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, released from Guantanamo then orchestrated a homicide attack blowing up an Iraqi police station murdering 7 policemen. 26 Iraqis were wounded in the attack. Folks, please understand that "wounded" could mean that the fire and concussion from the blast ruptured the sinuses, blew out the eardrums, lodged shrapnel in the chest, and blew the victim 20 feet through the air into a concrete wall causing a spinal fracture so the victim is now paralyzed, deaf, and burned on 50% of the body and must undergo reconstructive facial surgery. Many who are wounded in situations like these wish they had died. According the the wall street journal, "While in detention, he told interrogators that his intention was 'to kill as many Americans' as he possibly could." ...and Iraqis, apparently.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121029060962979277.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin As-Shibh, Walid bin 'Attash, Mustafa Ahmed AI-Hawsawi, and 'Ali 'abd Al-'Aziz 'Ali who are co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks recently filed the following document with the Guantanamo bay military commission:
http://craigglendenning.blogspot.com/2009/03/islamic-response-to-governments-nine.html
I will quote just one portion: "Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims.
Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion"
I wonder if the medic who had 16 reconstructive surgeries feels we need to "restore the standards of due process " for this gentle fellow who smashed her face in, or if we amply restored "the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism." by releasing Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi back into the wild to murder and maim?
Perspective, folks. Just a bit of perspective is all I ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment