Dinah Lord

Ex-Gitmo detainee cashing in on Xbox

"We think it will sell big in the Middle East."

From The Sun:

A BRIT who spent two years in Guantanamo Bay as a terror suspect is cashing in with a computer game based on the US detention camp.

Moazzam Begg, 41, will appear as himself in the Xbox 360 game, which could rake in £3million.

Rendition: Guantanamo, due to go on sale in October, lets players control a detainee trying to shoot his way out.

Begg, of Sparkhill, Birmingham, is shown in the game as head of an organisation helping the suspect to escape.

Human rights activist Begg was thrown into the camp on Cuba in 2003 after the CIA held him in Pakistan. He claims he was tortured before being freed without charge in 2005.

Begg said any money he is paid will go to a charity fighting for detainees’ rights.

He said: “The software firm approached me with the idea for a Guantanamo game. I’m involved to make sure it is as true to life as possible.”

Zarrar Chishti, director of the Scottish firm spending £250,000 to produce the game, said: “We checked with police and security services. We didn’t want MI5 knocking our door down.

“We are expecting an extreme reaction to the game in the US. But we think it will sell well in the Middle East.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was NOT waterboarded 183 times...

More liberal lies.

Are you surprised?

From Fox News.

The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The "183 times" was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face -- not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect.  According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."  

"The water was poured 183 times -- there were 183 pours," the official explained, adding that "each pour was a matter of seconds."

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

The confusion stems from language in the Justice Department legal memos that President Obama released on April 16. They contain the numbers, but they fail to explain exactly what they represent.

The memos, spanning from 2002-2005, were a legal review by the Bush administration that approved the use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques." Obama banned the procedure on his second day in office, saying that waterboarding is torture.

Copies of the released memos and more at the link.

Gitmo: Waterboarding out - welfare in.

And coming to a neighborhood near you soon.

From yesterday's media roundtable with Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence.

During his news conference, Blair also said the Obama administration is still wrestling with what to do with the remaining 240 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the president has ordered closed.

Some of the detainees, deemed non-threatening, may be released into the United States as free men, Blair confirmed.

That would happen when they can't be returned to their home countries, because the governments either won't take them or the U.S. fears they will be abused or tortured. That is the case with 17 Uighers (WEE'-gurz), Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared for release from the jail long ago. The U.S. can't find a country willing to take them, and it will not turn them over to China.

Blair said the former prisoners would have get some sort of assistance to start their new lives in the United States.

"We can't put them out on the street," he said.

Blair said the U.S. government is building dossiers on each of the prisoners at Guantanamo and is still developing the process that will determine what happens to them. Some may face criminal trials in the U.S. civilian courts and be imprisoned in U.S. jails. Others will be remanded to their home governments for continued jailing or potential rehabilitation.

The Pentagon claims more than 60 former Guantanamo inmates have been released by their home governments and are believed to be engaged in militant activities. It has not released a list of those former prisoners. Two of the top al-Qaida leaders in Yemen are former inmates, according to both al-Qaida and U.S. intelligence officials. And the Taliban's top operations officer in southern Afghanistan was released from Guantanamo in 2007, according to U.S. intelligence and military officials.

(Some claim that number is  higher.)

Could the number of Gitmo inmates returning to terror be higher than is being reported?

That's what Human Events is reporting.  (And these are only the ones we know about, possums.)

The number of ex-Guantanamo detainees who have gone back to terrorism is much larger than the government is letting on.

A senior intelligence official, who has access to some of the country's top secrets, tells HUMAN EVENTS that some Pentagon analysts actually believe 102 former enemy combatants have returned to terror -- not 61 as publicly reported by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

That would mean that of 520 terrorists released from the Guantanamo Bay prison, nearly 20 percent returned to the practice of killing to achieve their radical view of Islam.

Why the discrepancy?  Shhh.  We don't want to make the MINO-Moonbat-Media axis of appeasement mad by "inflating the number" to justify keeping Gitmo open or anything like that. 

The DIA has a rigorous standard of evidence before placing a former detainee on the back-to-terrorism list. It wants to avoid any charges from the news media or anti-war Democrats that it is inflating the number to justify holding accused terrorists indefinitely. But some intelligence officials believe there is sufficient evidence to say as many as 41 additional ex-inmates are terrorists again.

"There is evidence, whether it be intercepts or pockets of information we have picked up in interrogations, that these people are back at it," said the senior intelligence source. "I think it's fair to say from my perspective that the number of people who have returned to the battlefield is in excess of the 61."

And what is our dear leader saying these days?  He brings his sainted mother into the discussion and says he would NEVER put communities at risk!!!! 

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would never put communities like Leavenworth, Kan., at risk in deciding where to relocate prisoners once the Guantanamo detention camp is closed.

Leavenworth - "where my mother was born, by the way," Obama said - is the home of Fort Leavenworth, site of a military prison and one of several places under consideration as a replacement for the camp.

"We would never put people into a situation that elevated the risks for surrounding communities," the president said during an interview at the White House with McClatchy Newspapers and several other journalists. "That would obviously be something we would take very seriously as we make these decisions."

Obviously.  Sure.  Like the Obama team really feels there are any risks for letting these scumbags go.  Who has been put in charge of the closure?  This is the poor schmuck tasked with persuading other Nations and US states to accept the prisoners back. 

The administration is expected to name Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs, as a special envoy to oversee the closure, according to news reports. (editor's note: Dan Fried's bio can be found here.)

(<-Dan the Man)

As Guantanamo envoy, "Fried will be working with officials from the Pentagon and Justice Department as well as foreign governments on the specifics of closing the camp. He also will work with the State Department's ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Clint Williamson, who has been leading negotiations on detainee transfers, the officials said.  Fried declined to comment on the expected job offer.Fried has close relations with governments throughout Europe, where the change of U.S. administrations has increased the likelihood that European governments will accept custody of some Guantanamo inmates."

More on Clint Williamson can be found here and are you interested in the Office of War Crime Issues?  First of all, who knew there was such a thing and who knew this?  (Clint with his five o'clock shadow seen at right.  ->)

"...since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the office has been responsible for negotiating the repatriation, to their home countries, of individuals detained by the United States for their involvement in terrorist activities."

The latest country Clint is trying to sucker, bribe and/or strong arm into taking Muslim terrorist prisoners?  Freaking HUNGARY!

Hungary - just say visszautasítás to Gitmo scum. Remember Beslan!

Italy: Basta! No Gitmo inmates for us.

La Pelosi in She-wolf Hall.

It's looking like Nancy couldn't blow that stimulus bill off her desk fast enough because she had a little junket planned to Italy. 

Looks like the Italians aren't buying any of her pasta fazool - chosing the occasion to announce that Gitmo inmates weren't going to be enjoying La Dolce Vita anytime soon.

(She was given her grandparent's birth records.  "Oh mamma mia, I wasn't expecting this!" )

From AP:

Italy will not accept any Guantanamo Bay detainees when the U.S. prison shuts down, a close ally of Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Monday after meeting with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, said he knew of no Italian citizens at Guantanamo. People can be held in Italian prisons only after they are sentenced by the Italian judiciary or countries with which Rome has a bilateral agreement, he said.

Italian reports, citing human rights organizations, say as many as a dozen people who had been residents of Italy but not citizens are being held at Guantanamo. Italian officials have not addressed the issue.

Oh boy.  She's supposed to visit the Pope.  I hope he reams her about abortion rights and stem cell research.  Remember that communion stunt she pulled during the Pope's visit to DC, taking it (not from the Pope) and saying she felt 'very comfortable' with doing so, despite her views.

From AFP.

Pelosi, who describes herself as an "ardent" Catholic while advocating reproductive rights, will be the highest-ranking US official to see the pope since President Barack Obama took office last month.

The new Democratic administration is at odds with the Vatican over abortion, stemcell research and other bioethical issues.

Senior Vatican officials slammed Obama's rapid overturning of a ban on US government funding for family planning groups around the world that carry out or facilitate abortions.

Obama signed the executive order cancelling the eight-year-old restrictions imposed by his predecessor George W. Bush on the third full day of his presidency.

The Roman Catholic Church has also criticised the approval of US authorities for the first human trials using embryonic stemcells of a therapy to help paralysed patients regain movement.

Pelosi, who arrived in Rome on Sunday after spending the day in the Tuscan capital Florence, was to meet with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and lunch with her Italian counterpart Gianfranco Fini on Monday.

Monday afternoon she was to lead a conference on security before meeting the press.

On Tuesday, Pelosi was to meet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the defence and foreign ministers, Ignazio La Russa and Franco Frattini.

The House speaker plans to spend Thursday in southern Naples.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiles in the Italian parliament's lower chamber "Sala della Lupa" (She-wolf Hall) in Rome, Monday, Feb. 16, 2009. Pelosi is on an official visit in Italy until Wednesday Feb. 18, 2009. The she-wolf suckling the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, at background left, is the symbol of the eternal city.

 

You pick the she wolf.

UK: Gitmo Detainees would get 42 pounds a week and health care.

From the Times Online:

It is little wonder that the prospect of Britain taking even a handful of the terror suspects being held in Guantánamo Bay is being described in Whitehall as a hot potato.

Several departments must address issues ranging from any potential security risk the detainees pose to the immigration status under which they enter Britain, the housing and other benefits they can receive, and the inevitable public backlash.

How people react to foreign terror suspects being given sanctuary in Britain with accommodation, weekly cash benefits and access to the health service is a key consideration.

The Guantánamo detainees are expected to enter Britain as asylum seekers on the basis that they have a “well founded fear of persecution and torture” if they were returned to their home countries.

It seems improbable that they would be offered work permits

US: Gates orders plan drafted for Guantanamo Closing.

This is going to prove to be a HUGE mistake, mark my words.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered aides to prepare a plan for closing the Guantanamo prison, a declared priority for president-elect Barack Obama, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

Gates wanted to be prepared in case Obama decides to take action on Guantanamo soon after taking office next month, said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

"The request has been made, his team is working on it so he can be prepared to assist the president-elect should he wish to address this very early in his tenure," Morrell said.

You know my plan.  Since Dianne Feinstein is so all fired eager to close Guantanamo, the inmates should be shipped out to her district, to Alcatraz, to be specific.  There, they can be a tourist attraction AND the prime target for terror. 

USA: Playing the system, jihadi style.

Another delay in the 9/11 trials of KSM and his band of merry MUSLIM scumbags pending mental status tests. 

Three alleged 9/11 plotters who say they want to make confessions at their war-crimes trial have postponed entering pleas until the military determines their co-defendants are mentally competent.

A military judge prevented two of the defendants from entering pleas over concerns about their mental fitness.

The alleged mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, says he is ready to confess but will wait until all five can respond in unison. "We want everyone to plea together," he said.

A letter from all five co-defendants Monday says they are giving up their defense even though they face the death penalty.

Mohammed has said before that he wants to be executed so that he can become a martyr.

Not so fast, Chunky Monkey.

It has not been determined whether the defendants, formally charged in June, will face a potential death sentence. The commissions to try foreign terrorists have been delayed for years by legal challenges.

What did I say about them playing the system?

They say they decided to abandon all efforts to defend themselves on Nov. 4, the day Barack Obama was elected to the White House.

Observers say it's as if they want to rush toward convictions before Obama takes office.

The president-elect has vowed to end the war-crimes trials and close the Guantanamo prison camp.