McConnell Demands Gitmo Trial for Bowling Green Terrorists

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell presses his demand that the Bowling Green terrorists be tried at Gitmo.  Here is his op-ed in this morning's Washington Post:

Speaking to a crowd of lawyers in Washington last week, Attorney General Eric Holder made an audacious claim about the war on terrorism. Overlooking the all-volunteer military force that has heroically battled terrorists and insurgents for nearly a decade, our outstanding intelligence and counterterrorism experts, and many others, Holder asserted that America’s “most effective terror-fighting weapon” is its civilian court system.

These comments insult those who have served on the front lines, but Holder’s clear intent was to justify the Obama administration’s two-year misadventure in treating captured terrorists like common criminals. This is evident most recently in Bowling Green, Ky., where two Iraqi nationals who have admitted to targeting American troops in Iraq were arrested last month.

Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi made their way to the United States from Iraq in 2009 through what appears to be a bureaucratic mistake. Expert intelligence and police work led to the discovery of their violent past and their plans to support their terrorist comrades from the safety of their new home. When they were arrested, they were plotting to equip foreign fighters in Iraq with missile launchers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, sniper rifles, machine guns and cases of C4 explosives.

The Justice Department says Alwan and Hammadi should be tried in a civilian setting because they were caught here. This is ludicrous. The fact that bureaucrats mistakenly allowed two foreign fighters into the United States does not entitle them to all the rights and privileges of U.S. citizens. If it did, we’d have to grant the same rights and privileges to any foreign fighters who had escaped from the battlefield and illegally entered the United States. Once we knew who they were, our top priority should have been to capture, detain and interrogate them to ensure they could no longer harm Americans.

Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta recently estimated that there are 1,000 members of al-Qaeda in Iraq operating in that country. Kentuckians, including the state’s Democratic governor, want to know why two of them are sitting in a Kentucky jail cell instead of the military facility we built for such men at Guantanamo. I called on the Obama administration last week to transfer them. I have not yet received an answer, nor have I heard a good argument as to why Guantanamo is not a superior alternative.

Aside from the propriety of housing and, if necessary, trying enemy combatants such as Alwan and Hammadi in a military setting, the costs and burdens of trying them in a civilian setting are significant. My constituents do not think that civilian judges and jurors in their community should be subjected to the risk of reprisal for participating in a terrorist trial. Nor should the broader community have to shoulder the security costs or inconvenience of such trials.

Consider the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in Alexandria, before the military commissions legislation was passed. Alexandria’s Democratic mayor summed up residents’ reaction: “We’ve had this experience and it was unpleasant,” he said. “Let someone else have it.” Last year, New Yorkers rejected Holder’s plan to try Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court in Manhattan, with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) calling the proposal to hold terror trials in New York a “wrongheaded idea.” In April, Holder reversed course and said the trial would be held at Guantanamo.

Like Bowling Green residents, New Yorkers knew that while it may be possible to try terrorists in civilian courtrooms, our overriding goal in such cases should be to prevail in the war against terrorism, not to make a point about the flexibility of our justice system.

Early on, the administration signaled its intent to use conventional law enforcement and courts to deal with unconventional enemies. The problem with this is that the civilian system was never intended to deal with foreign fighters or to gather intelligence in the pursuit of additional terrorists. The confusion surrounding the interrogation of the would-be Christmas Day bomber underscores this. Moreover, the criminal justice system is oriented toward prosecution, while our top priority in battling terrorism should be to find, capture and detain or kill those who would do us harm.

The administration has shown admirable flexibility in making decisions concerning national security and has shown that it is willing, on occasion, to put safety over ideology. President Obama launched a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, ignored calls to hastily withdraw from Iraq and recently agreed to extend the Patriot Act without weakening its provisions or making them harder to use. He should make the right decision about the treatment of captured enemy combatants.

Guantanamo is uniquely suited to the unconventional threat posed by foreign terrorists. By sending Alwan and Hammadi to Guantanamo, the president could again show his flexibility, make us safer and let Holder know that our civilian courts are off-limits to foreign fighters captured in the war on terrorism.  

When Will Conway Take Position on Kentucky Terrorists?

Elected officials across the Commonwealth of Kentucky are opining on where the Bowling Green terrorists should be tried, but no word yet from Attorney General Jack Conway.

Sen. Rand Paul has suggested to WHAS that perhaps the Kentucky terrorists can be detained and tried here in Kentucky, rather than at Gitmo. Paul said,

"I think the people who are on the ground and look at court safety and trials will have to look at that," Paul said, " And I think the only other way to look at it in a logical way would be to look at the other terror trials and - like I say - we've had several hundred terror trials in the U.S."


"I think in this instance, if you capture them here, I think the federal courts probably can take care of them much more swiftly than Guantanamo and actually give them very lengthy sentences if they are found guilty." 


Meanwhile, Gov. Steve Beshear is taking heat from Republican gubernatorial nominee David Williams for failing to call on the Obama administration to move the Kentucky terrorist trials to Gitmo.  To be fair to Beshear, however, he has questioned the safety of trying the two al Qaeda members in Kentucky.

Republican nominee for Attorney General Todd P'Pool, like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, has demanded the Obama administration move the terrorist trials to Gitmo. McConnell brought up the issue on the Senate floor and later on Fox News, and has been very aggressive on the issue.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder implicitly reacted to McConnell, when Holder addressed the American Constitutional Society (the liberal counterpart to the Federalist Society).  According to the New York Times, Holder

did not mention Mr. McConnell or the Iraqi case. But he defended the executive branch’s prerogative of choosing which venue to try people in. “Decisions about how, where and when to prosecute must be made by prosecutors, not politicians,” he said.


And the attorney general specifically denounced calls to require all terrorism cases to be prosecuted by the military at Guantánamo rather than in the civilian courts, characterizing proponents of that approach as employing “fear-mongering” and “overheated rhetoric that is detached from history — and from the facts.”

Noting that no terrorism suspect arrested on United States soil had been tried by a military commission under either the Bush or the Obama administration, Mr. Holder said hundreds of such defendants had instead been successfully prosecuted in civilian courts. In none of those cases, he said, did a defendant escaped custody or did one of the judicial districts involved suffer retaliatory attacks.

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has been curiously silent on the issue. His web site lists "Protecting Our Families" as one of his signature issues, but only refers to prosecuting elder abuse and the like.  Of course, elder abuse should be prosecuted.  But a platform against elder abuse does not bear on protecting Kentuckians from a retaliatory attack from al Qaeda operatives arrested in Bowling Green -- including one terrorist whose fingerprints were found on an IED in Iraq.

Yet in his failed Senate campaign against Rand Paul, Conway called for GITMO to be closed.  In one interview on YouTube, Conway indicated that although he didn't like the idea of terrorists being detained and tried in Kentucky but stated that it might be possible, with the hope that the U.S. military could keep us all safe.  Typical Conway waffle.

Politically, Conway is in the awkward position of crossing either Beshear (who seems to want the terrorists out of here) or the Eric Holder and the Obama administration and their obstinate disregard of the fears of those who will be in harms way if the terrorist are tried here, in a (red) flyover state.

Conway will irritate members of his base no  matter which way he comes out on the issue.

Question for Jack Conway -- and for that matter, Rand Paul:  how would you feel if your wife is called to serve on the jury of the Bowling Green terrorists?  The U.S. military is a mighty force.  But would you really want someone you loved on the jury that passes judgment on an al Qaeda terrorist? It's hard to be a politician's wife if you are in the witness protection program.

P'Pool Pounces on GITMO Issue

Republican nominee Todd P'Pool was smart to hit hard on an issue that has united Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Rand Paul and even Gov. Steve Beshear:  send the Kentucky terrorists to GITMO.  Here's P'Pool's release:

Republican Attorney General candidate Todd P’Pool waded into the debate Friday about what whether suspected terrorists charged in Bowling Green on May 25^th should be tried in a Kentucky civilian courtroom or at secure military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  

“As a conservative and a prosecutor, I believe the first and foremost priority of government should be keeping our citizens safe from enemies – foreign and domestic,” said P’Pool. “Terrorists should be tried as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, not here in Kentucky.”

Attorney General Jack Conway has previously issued calls to close Guantanamo Bay, and even chastised President Obama for campaigning to close Guantanamo Bay and not following through. In an interview viewable on YouTube, Conway even suggested that bringing suspected terrorists for trial on Kentucky soil might be acceptable.  That prompted P’Pool’s campaign manager, David Ray to assert that Conway was far from the mainstream opinion in Kentucky.

“Facing the possibility of having suspected terrorists tried on Kentucky soil, it’s not surprising that Jack Conway hasn’t challenged the Obama administration on this issue,” said Ray. “Conway’s reckless position could endanger Kentuckians and cost the state vast resources to protect and detain suspected terrorists. This is yet another issue where he owes the voters of Kentucky a thorough explanation.”

P’Pool also thanked Kentucky law enforcement for their efforts in keeping Kentuckians safe from this ongoing threat.

“Kentucky’s law enforcement represents some of our bravest citizens, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their role in this case. The high level of professionalism displayed bythe FBI’s Louisville Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky, the Louisville Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Justice Department’s National Security Division is to be commended.”

On May 25^th, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohaned Shareef Hammadi were charged by a federal grand jury with terrorism charges. According to the grand jury, the two Iraqi refugees were plotting to ship sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, explosives and money to their home country to be used in attacks on U.S. troops.

Waterboarding Works

CIA Director Leon Panetta went off script and confirmed the obvious: enhanced interrogation at places like Gitmo has contributed important leads in the war on terror -- including information leading to the location of Osama bin Laden.

From the Daily Caller:

"We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation… clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees,” he [Panetta] told NBC anchor Brian Williams.

When asked by Williams if water-boarding was part of the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Panetta simply said “that’s correct.”

Score one for common sense v. political correctness.

New Rand Profile: He Admits He'd "Ultimately" Close Gitmo

Reason magazine profiles Rand Paul and the "careful messaging" and "delicate balance" he uses to avoid scaring mainstream Republicans. Clearly, Paul will say anything to win, and as the article makes clear, every time Paul tries to reassure mainstream Republicans, he worries libertarians.

Note this nugget. According to Reason, Paul

would "ultimately" close Gitmo, but not until it is determined what will be done with the prisoners, who he does not want sent to the United States.

Every time Trey Grayson reminds voters that Rand Paul wants to close Gitmo, Paul calls Grayson a liar. And yet in an interview with a libertarian magazine, Paul admits that "ultimately" he wants Gitmo closed.

The profile also suggests that Paul would refuse to fund the Iraq war, which Paul states he would have voted against:

The Rand Paul campaign also uses a somewhat different tone than Ron Paul’s on military spending: “In Rand’s proposed budget, defense spending would represent a larger percentage of the total budget than it does today, while military spending on unnecessary programs and unconstitutional operations would be eliminated.” Says Rand Paul campaign manager David Adams.

"Unconstitutional operations"? That's Paul-speak for Iraq. Regardless of what one thinks about the decision to invade Iraq, we are there now. Our soldiers are in harm's way and the last thing they need is a U.S. Senator who wants to "eliminate[]" "military spending on unnecessary programs and unconstitutional operations."

C-J Truth-Checks Rand

Courier-Journal coverage of the Jefferson County Lincoln Day dinner corrected Dr. Rand Paul's attempt to sound less eccentric on the issue of Gitmo detainees.

Joe Gerth writes that the Grayson campaign called Paul to account for a quote he made last summer, when Paul said that the administration should take the Gitmo detainees and "drop them back off in Afghanistan, it'll take them awhile to get back over here."

Paul, according to Gerth, called Trey Grayson "intellectually dishonest"for taking the quote out of context. Paul maintains that he only wants to send those Gitmo detainees back from whence they came if they cannot be convicted.

Gerth's analysis: "Paul's summary of the question was correct, but then he got into a bit of trouble when he claimed that the question was limited to Chinese Muslims, called Uighurs. . . . A video of the interview doesn't back that up. Paul went from talking about border policy to Guantanamo Bay and Uighurs were never mentioned."

Even with Paul's "context," it's still a bizarre remark.

Paul never explains why he assumes that the detainees cannot be convicted. Does he really believe that these thugs in Gitmo are innocent?

Probably not, because he tries to reassure us that it will "take them awhile to get back over here." In essence, Paul's plan for keeping us safe merely buys us time -- postpones the inevitable attack from terrorists with a very high recidivism rate. Case in point: the Christmas Day Bomber was trained by a Gitmo graduate. Paul fails to grasp the danger of his own proposal. The issue is not how long it will take these terrorists to "get back over here." We don't want them free to attack us, not tomorrow, not next year, not ever.

Paul's Gitmo deportation idea hearkens back to the American Colonization Society's plans to send slaves to Liberia before the Civil War -- solve the political problem of slavery by just getting the slaves out of America. If they are Over There, we don't have to think about them any more. That is not to analogize innocent slaves to terrorists but rather to point out that as with slavery, the issue is too complex for a pat answer; too much has happened with the enemy combatants to simply give them a boat ride back. The American Colonization Society, like Paul, was well-intentioned, but naive.

Here's Paul's now-famous YouTube video on sending back the boys from Gitmo.

Trey Pounds Rand On Gitmo

I only caught the part of Trey Grayson's interactive video chat last night that fell after swim practice and before the Social Studies project, but here's my take: he made Dr. Rand Paul look dangerous on the issue of closing Gitmo.

Grayson and Paul are indistinguishable on fiscal issues. As Paul has done all along, Grayson hit hard the need to get "our financial house in order." Grayson also made an interesting point on the national security implications of our enormous deficit; our debt allows us to be held hostage by China or whoever chooses to lend us the money to continue the Democrats' profligate spending.

But where Grayson really shone is on the question of whether President Barack Obama should close Gitmo. Grayson opposes closing Gitmo (and moving its terrorist prisoners to nearby Illinois) in the strongest possible terms.

He ridiculed Paul's assertion that we can deport the "enemy combatants" to whence they came because it would take them "a long time to get back here." Grayson maintains that we cannot allow the people who want to kill us to come back to complete their mission.

National security and foreign policy are issues that reveal the most fundamental differences between Grayson and Paul. There is no doubt that Paul is a fiscal conservative. In this primary -- in this time of our nation's history -- that is necessary, but not sufficient. Paul needs to address the national security issues upon which he would be called to vote. It is time to expand the discussion of issues beyond catch-words like "out of control spending! deficits! career politicians!"

Poor Illinois

It's the ultimate bait and switch. President Barack Obama flew to Europe to bring back the Summer Olympics to Chicago -- to no avail. But he does have a little something for his home state.

Obama is sending Gitmo terrorists to an Illinois prison 150 miles from Chicago.

So instead of Michael Phelps in a Speedo, Illinois gets a group of Islamofascists who'd like to break out and kill everyone.

Joe Biden Admits He's "Out of the Loop"

President Barack Obama promised he would restore the standing of America overseas. Yet look at how Britain's Daily Telegraph reports on his vice president:

It seems that all a reporter has to do to find out about the pickle Barack Obama's is really in over his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison is to ask the veep, who was talking to the press at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo on the final day of his trip to the Balkans.

So will Obama fulfill his vow - announced amid great fanfare in an executive order on day two of his presidency - to close the facility by January 2010? "I think so," Biden responded, according to Newsweek's Holly Bailey.

So perhaps he will. Or perhaps not. We'll see.

Biden continued: "But, look, what the president said is that this is going to be hard. It's like opening Pandora's Box. We don't know what's inside the box." [Emphasis added.]

He also said that "to the best of my knowledge" the number of prisoners "who are a real danger who are not able to returned or tried" has "not been established" by the Obama administration.

So he basically just confirmed his predecessor Dick Cheney's analysis that the decision was taken "with little deliberation, and no plan".

Oh, but it gets wierder. For how those of us who don't want Gitmo terrorists in our jails, Biden suggested a good summer vacation road trip:

For those citizens who might be a tad concerned about hardened Islamist fighters being housed in jails on the American mainland, the veep suggested they should visit the Unabomber or Richard Reid at the Colorado's Supermax.

"There's a bit of a hysteria about, well, my God, these guys are so dangerous. Go to some maximum security cells if you want to know some dangerous people. Matter of fact, it might be an awakening to them."

Got that? Stop being hysterical and go buy a Greyhound ticket to the Supermax.

The buffoon who said these things is one heart beat away from being president, because that's the kind of quality decision we've come to expect from the Obama administration.

McConnell Gets Credit on Gitmo

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is getting the credit (and our thanks) for the Obama administration's stunning defeat yesterday in its quest to close Gitmo before it has a plan on where to relocate its terrorists.

Even MSNBC, no friend to Republicans, acknowledged that McConnell has led on this issue. Chuck Todd said on the Morning Joe:

Let's give Mitch McConnell political credit here. The Senate Republican leader, he’s been sort of a one man band on this issue for two months. Even in the face of criticism from members of his own party saying hey, why are you focusing on this, this is a distraction, this looks like the Republicans are out of touch, just obsessed with only one issue and guess what, he's created a pretty good political problem for this White House.

With 16 Senate floor speeches and numerous interviews and op-eds, McConnell has been relentless. McConnell has pounded the Obama administration for announcing that it would close Gitmo when the administration has not found a country or a state willing to take the detainees. As the Washington Post noted,

Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have used the Gitmo closure as evidence that Obama is not fundamentally serious about the defense of the homeland.

Obama must be particularly stung that so many Democrats abandoned him. Yesterday the Senate voted 90-6 to bar the use of federal funds to “transfer, release or incarcerate” Guantanamo detainees “to or within the United States.” Given how few votes McConnell has these days, that's some margin of victory.

It's more than just a political victory for McConnell and Republicans. No terrorist has ever escaped from Gitmo. Keeping Gitmo open keeps us safer than if its Islamofascists are relocated to prisons around the country to recruit and radicalize the U.S. prison population -- or worse, to escape and kill again.

McConnell: Keep These Thugs at Gitmo

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a piece in The Hill's Congress Blog that highlights three of the terrorists who would be released from Gitmo -- and perhaps housed on U.S. soil -- if the Obama administration persists in closing Gitmo. McConnell has complained for weeks that the administration announced its intent to close Gitmo even though it has no plan whatsoever on where to put the enemy combatants housed there.

McConnell notes that

[One]reason we haven’t been attacked is because some men who are most likely to do so are locked up in Guantanamo. These inmates aren’t spectators. They’re the enemy. They’re the plotters, the planners, the funders, the ones who pull the trigger.

. . .

McConnell highlights three of the terrorist who -- if Obama has his way -- might be coming to a prison near you:

Thug No. 1

One of the men who’s locked away safely at Guantanamo is Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the man who actually organized the 9/11 attacks. We captured him while he was planning follow-up attacks to 9/11, including a plot to destroy a West Coast skyscraper. If we hadn’t captured Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, he may very well have succeeded in carrying out the same kind of attack on the West Coast that he carried out on the East Coast.

This is a man who boasts about using his, quote, ‘blessed right hand’ to decapitate the American journalist Daniel Pearl. And he’s unrepentant: earlier this year, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad joined a number of other detainees at Guantanamo in declaring themselves, quote, ‘terrorists to the bone,’ and proclaiming September 11, 2001, as a, quote, ‘blessed’ day.

Thug No. 2

Another inmate who still declares himself a ‘terrorist to the bone’ is Ali Abd al-Azeez Ali, who served as a key lieutenant for KSM on several plots against the United States and the United Kingdom, including the 9/11 attacks. During what he describes as the, quote, ‘Blessed 11 September operation,’ Ali transferred money to U.S.-based operatives and served as a sort of travel agent for some of the hijackers. This man is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Thug No. 3

Another terrorist at Guantanamo who is responsible for the death of Americans is Abd Al-Rahim Al Nashiri, who masterminded the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors in 2000. When he was arrested, Nashiri was planning new terrorist attacks, including a plot to crash an airplane into a Western naval vessel and a plan targeting a U.S. housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

And these are just three of many. None of them has been able to kill another American since they were "detained" at Gitmo.

Why mess with success?

Keep Gitmo Detainees Out of Kentucky

The Obama Administration has not said what it will do with all the detainees after it closes the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The administration is not saying because it does not know. Plainly, the administration has no plan for where to put these thugs. Germany doesn't want them, and Saudi Arabia has refused them. (So much for the Obama World Appeasement Tour making America lovable again.)

Even Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is complaining about the administration's lack of specific on where it will send the terrorists.

A state senator in Louisiana has introduced a resolution stating that Louisiana does not want the detainees.

Kentucky needs to do the same during the upcoming special session. All accounts of the overcrowding at the Fayette County jail suggest that we cannot even accommodate our home bred criminals. We don't need to supplement the population with jihadists.

Such a resolution is perhaps the only proactive thing our state legislature can do that won't require a single tax dollar. So let's make clear that if Obama wants to persist in his foolhardy plan to close Gitmo, we don't want these detainees in our backyard.

Update: France has agreed to take one (1) Gitmo detainee! I feel so much safer.

McConnell Op-Ed in WaPo on Gitmo

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a pieces in today's Washington Post. In the Post, McConnell criticizes the Obama administration's plan to close Guantanamo Bay's detention facility and send the enemy combatants (a term Obama refuses to use) to mainland American prisons in Colorado and Kansas.

McConnell accurately frames the issue as safety vs. popularity:

"While some have raised the concern that holding enemy combatants at Guantanamo damages our prestige, any plan to transfer or release them must meet a simple test: Will it keep Americans as safe as Guantanamo has? If the answer is no, the administration must explain why fulfilling a campaign promise or pleasing European critics is a more important consideration."

There are no good alternatives to Gitmo that can keep Americans safe, McConnell notes:

First, not a single detainee has ever escaped to maim or kill innocents. Guantanamo Bay is, above all else, secure and safely distant from civilian populations.

That is, Gitmo actually works. It incarcerates the worst of the worst terrorists and prevents them from achieving their life objective: killing our citizens and destroying our country.