Guess what? Another former Guantanamo detainee, Abdul Qayyum,
has turned up back with the Taliban. I know, big surprise.
A man freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.
Oh yeah, and his second-in-command was also a prisoner at Guantanamo.
Qayyum's key aide in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who told his U.S. interrogators he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.
We had known terrorist leaders in custody and we let them go. Here's the description of Qayyum.
A Taliban commander in the 1990s who was notorious for brutality and summary executions, Qayyum was captured in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo.
The incompetent Bush administration released him to Afghan custody in 2007, and they set him free. Now we get to fight him again.
U.S. intelligence asserts that 20 percent of suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison have returned to the fight and the number has been steadily increasing.
That's the most the government is willing to admit. And even 20% is far too many. According to the article Qayyum was noted for carrying out summary executions. That's exactly what should have happened to him. Once we were finished interrogating him -- with torture if necessary -- we should have put a bullet through his brain. But oh no, we couldn't do that. Too many people would whine and snivel about his imaginary rights, and call our action a war crime. We're just too civilized to execute murderous terrorists. We'll let them go instead, so they can kill more Americans, our allies, and Afghan civilians. Because the important thing is that we get people out of Guantanamo. Maybe we'll be able to capture him again, keep him a few more years, and then let him go after he promises that he really, really just wants to go be with his family this time.
I'd definitely be in favor of torturing the scumbags if it could be shown to be effective. I'm not convinced that torture is an effective tool, though. And no, water-boarding is not torture in my book. That is aggressive interrogation.
ReplyDeletehttp://thegodlessmonster.com/
"I'm not convinced that torture is an effective tool, though."
ReplyDeleteIt's an interrogation technique. Sometimes interrogation techniques work, sometimes they don't. It depends on who is doing the interrogating, who is being interrogated, and what information is in question.
" And no, water-boarding is not torture in my book. That is aggressive interrogation."
Well, I know people sharply differ on that point. Torture is a highly subjective term. Personally I consider waterboarding as it was used by the U.S. to be a relatively mild form of torture.
Waterboarding is just another way of scaring the shit out of someone. Nothing removed, broken,lacerated, pierced, burned, twisted, sprained, electrocuted, chemically burned, frozen or separated. Nope, not torture by my(admittedly subjective) definition. Sadly, nowadays, scaring the shit out of someone is labeled torture.
ReplyDelete