Barack Obama Planting the Seeds of the Next 9/11

Imagine that you are president of the United States.

An Ethiopian joins al-Qaeda, meets personally with Osama bin Laden, receives terrorist training, and plots attacks against innocent Americans to be committed on American soil.  Fortunately, he's later captured and is now in custody, unable to plan further attacks.

So, you're Barack Obama.  What do you do with him?

The question is not hypothethical.

Mohammed is an Ethiopian-born jihadist. As terrorism researcher Thomas Joscelyn has documented (see here and here), he joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and met personally with Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda figures. He received extensive, sophisticated terrorist training. In 2002, when he was finally apprehended in Pakistan, he was almost certainly en route to the United States to conduct attacks with José Padilla (who has since been convicted of terrorism offenses). Padilla is notorious as the alleged “dirty bomber” because he — along with the lesser known Mohammed — studied the possibility of constructing and detonating a radiological bomb in an American city. As Joscelyn recounts, Mohammed and Padilla “explored a wide range of possible targets and modes of attack, from striking U.S. subways to setting apartment buildings on fire using ordinary gas lines.”

So what do you do with such a man?

Try him in civilian courts?

Try him in a military court?

Nahhh -- if you're Barack Obama, you find a third way. 

You -- release him!

Andrew C. McCarthy:

This is a national-security disaster. Up until now, President Obama has voted “present” on enemy combatants. Rather than resolve the dilemma between the law-enforcement approach (which he supported as a candidate) and the law-of-war paradigm, he has said he is studying what to do about the remaining 245 Gitmo detainees. Now, it appears his plan is incalculably worse than either alternative: He is going to let many of them go.

Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder now concede that Gitmo is a Grade A detention facility. And there’s no question that we have a legal right to hold combatants — the only controversy is over what the detention proceedings should entail in terms of due process. Nevertheless, the president has publicly committed to close Gitmo by next January. This has needlessly ratcheted up pressure to find countries willing to take the combatants off our hands, even if those countries are unwilling to ensure that these trained jihadists will be prevented from rejoining the battle — as scores of released combatants already have done.

So now Binyam Mohammed is at liberty. Can others, perhaps hundreds of others, be far behind?

In a meeting a few weeks ago with families of those who died on 9/11 and in the USS Cole attack, Obama promised that, as his administration sorts out the remaining Gitmo detainees, deserving offenders would face swift and sure justice. That begs the question: What does the president think is necessary before an offender is considered deserving?

Put another way, Binyam Mohammed is almost certainly a worse offender than most of the 245 remaining combatants. If Obama thinks releasing a dangerous terrorist who planned attacks against Americans at home is consistent with his obligation to protect our nation, whom wouldn’t he release?

Barack Obama is planting the seeds of the next 9/11.

Comments

[Claudia]

Gina,
The posat above mine that is saying it was US and ONLY US that are doing all those things wasn't by me. I don't know who it might have been by or who wrote it, but I certainly didn't...

I think that the article you put up is very good and SPOT ON about what Obama and Holder are doing and I am ashamed that they are being so stupid as to let those men roam around the world or our nation without being able to track them. I would IF I COULD, put every one of them in a cement hole in the ground to live their days out, or put them all in front of a firing squad. But that is jsut my way of ealing with terrorists, I would not let them out and I abhore that Obama is NOT doing the right thing, as it emboldens those terrorist to do worse and worse, until they get caught, again.

[Claudia]

thank you.....