Promises, Promises

This is a great compilation of President Obama's increasingly hollow promises (boasts? threats? pleas?) to close GITMO.

Of course, he can close it any time he likes. The only thing he can't do is bring the detainees to the United States, not so long as U.S. law prohibits that. But then, if he closed it, he'd have to dispose of the remaining detainees somehow or somewhere else, and that is a practical problem he is unable to solve.

Congress is highly unlikely to let him off the hook, given the large bipartisan consensus against bringing the detainees here. And that is not even considering the toxic relationship between Obama and Congress in this, his Lame Duck year.

What to do? I say, why not release and kill?

Not Yet Closing Time For GITMO

This week Congress voted down an amendment to the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act that would have struck out existing prohibitions on the use of funds to transfer terrorists housed at GITMO to the United States, or to construct or modify facilities in the U.S. to house detainees transferred from GITMO. The amendment was defeated 259-163 with 21 of the Noes coming from Democrats.

This defeat should not have come as a surprise to the author of the amendment, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who had tried it before with the same results.

As time runs out on the Obama administration, it is releasing GITMO detainees in a rush and sometimes without due regard for the safeguards that will be applied to releasees in their new locations. According to the administration's own reports to Congress, about one in three former detainees are known or suspected to have reengaged in terrorism. Such reckless disregard has created distrust between the administration and Congress that will be the kiss of death for any more Nadler amendments.

It is not yet closing time for GITMO, but Nadler can dream while he cries in his beer. Shall we open all the doors and let this bunch out into the world?

Step 1: Release More Prisoners, Step 2: A Miracle Happens, Step 3: Close GITMO

The NYT has a nice read today about why Obama’s Plan For Guantánamo Is Seen Faltering:

The administration’s fitful effort to shut down the prison is collapsing again. Ashton B. Carter, in his first six months as defense secretary, has yet to make a decision on any newly proposed deals to transfer individual detainees. His delay, which echoes a pattern last year by his predecessor, Chuck Hagel, is generating mounting concern in the White House and State Department, officials say.

Last week, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, convened a cabinet-level “principals committee” meeting on how to close the prison before the president leaves office in 18 months. At that meeting, Mr. Carter was presented with an unsigned National Security Council memo stating that he would have 30 days to make decisions on newly proposed transfers, according to several officials familiar with the internal deliberations.

But the meeting ended inconclusively. Mr. Carter did not commit to making a decision on pending transfer proposals by a particular date, including the repatriation of a Mauritanian and a Moroccan. Nor was it clear whether he accepted the 30-day deadline, those officials said.

Can the administration arm-twist Secretary Carter into approving more releases? What would be in it for him?

Even if they can, they would still have to deal with Congress. Back in January, Politico had an interesting take on the strategy the administration may be planning to use to overcome the very large reluctance of Congress to closing Gitmo:

Administration officials say their strategy is to keep cutting the number of prisoners, which started at 242 when Obama was sworn in and now stands at 127. When the tally drops below 100 and perhaps even as low as a few dozen, officials say, the cost per prisoner will zoom so high that keeping the facility open will be transparently foolish and lawmakers will abandon their resistance to closing the island jail.

“I think the facts and the logic will be very compelling, once we get it down to a small core,” said Cliff Sloan, who stepped down last year after 18 months as the State Department envoy for Guantánamo closure. “I think the case becomes overwhelming for them to be able to be moved to the U.S. and placed in very secure facilities.”

-- snip --

“Nobody should underestimate the determination of the president to close Guantánamo in his presidency,” Sloan said. “He feels very strongly about it.”

He feels very strongly about it? Well, I feel very strongly about buying my own stretch of prime trout-fishing river front someday. Let’s see who gets lucky first, me or Obama.

Back to the story:

“If Obama couldn’t win over Congress on this issue when the Democrats controlled one house, how much more likely is it he’ll be able to win over Congress when the Republicans control both houses?” asked detainee lawyer David Remes.

-- snip --

By 230-184, the House cast a largely party-line vote last year to put a one-year halt on all transfers out of Guantánamo, a measure stripped out in talks with the Democratic-controlled Senate. Republicans now have 12 more House seats than they did last year and have gained a majority in the Senate.

The numbers are against the administration on this, but I must say that's an interesting political strategy they have for turning things around. It is a well-known fact that our elected representatives hate to be associated with wasteful government spending. Why, I'm sure the typical Congressman would like nothing better than to get into a debate with an opponent who promises to spend whatever amount of money it takes to keep those prisoners in Gitmo and away from the United States.

I mean, they would, right?

D'Oh! Released GITMO Prisoner Returns to Al-Qa'ida Leadership Role

Ode D'Oh! to the Sea

On Sunday, President Obama told CNN's Candy Crowley that he is "going to do everything I can to close" the detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Then, on Monday, the news broke that his Special Envoy charged with negotiating detainee transfers from GITMO is resigning. The resignation may or may not be due to disagreements with the Defense Department, as the New York Times speculated, but I don't suppose it bodes well for Obama's plan to close GITMO by transferring the remaining detainees to other countries.

Even worse, last Thursday the State Department announced that it has designated a Saudi national named Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, a former GITMO detainee who had been repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2006, as a heavy hitter al-Qa'ida leader who is currently active in Yemen.

The Department of State has designated the Egyptian Ajnad Misr group, and Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, an al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) senior leader, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism.

-- snip --

Ibrahim al-Rubaysh is a senior leader of AQAP, a designated FTO and Specially Designated Global entity. He serves as a senior advisor for AQAP operational planning and is involved in the planning of attacks. He has served as a senior AQAP sharia official since 2013, and as a senior AQAP sharia official, al-Rubaysh provides the justification for attacks conducted by AQAP. In addition, he has made public statements, including one in August 2014 where he called on Muslims to wage war against the United States. In addition, since October 14, 2014, Ibrahim al-Rubaysh has been subject to a five million dollar Reward for Justice [here].

We had the guy, but we let him go? Well, that's embarrassing. Especially considering that the U.S. military recommended Ibrahim al-Rubaysh for continued detention in a memo dated 30 November 2005, according to declassified records published in the New York Times [here]:

Executive Summary: Detainee is assessed as n Al-Qaida member who traveled to Afghanistan intent on training for jihad in Chechnya, but stayed and joined the Taliban. Detainee stayed in Al-Qaida guesthouses and attended that group's Al-Farouq terrorist training camp. He participated in hostilities in Tora Bora. Detainee is also linked to known Al-Qaida members. It is assessed this detainee is a MEDIUM risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies. JTF GTMO determined this detainee is of MEDIUM intelligence value.

Despite that assessment, we released Ibrahim al-Rubaysh just a few months later. Why be in a hurry to release a detainee who was an AQ member captured while escaping from Afghanistan, and who might pose a future threat to our interests?

Beats me. Maybe someone was overcome with emotion after reading his sappy poem "Ode to the Sea", which was published by the University of Iowa Press.

ODE TO THE SEA

By Ibrahim al-Rubaish

O sea, give me news of my loved ones.

Were it not for the chains of the faithless, I would have dived into you, And reached my beloved family, or perished in your arms.

And it goes on from there, a real tear-jerker about how the cruel Caribbean Sea was keeping him captive far from his loved ones.

Don't feel too sorry for poor Ibrahim. After the U.S. government unchained him in 2006, he left his beloved family behind in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when he fled to Yemen to rejoin al-Qa'ida.

This experience with al-Qa'ida's poet-planner is bound to kill whatever appetite Congress may have had for further detainee releases. Will Obama actually close GITMO in his final quarter? Don't bet on it. 
  

Close GITMO? We've Heard That Song Before

Last Wednesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein tried to resuscitate a dead political issue by releasing a Government Accountability Office study on the feasibility of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and transferring its inmates to prisons in the United States. She had commissioned the GAO study in 2008.

Why release the report now, three years after the expiration of the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline to close GITMO? Because, as she told the New York Times:

“This report demonstrates that if the political will exists, we could finally close Guantánamo without imperiling our national security.”

Really? Where does she think this political will might exist? Not in these United States, where both the House and the Senate passed bills to prohibit closure back in 2009, when that was still a live possibility. Passed them by overwhelming margins. Gallop polls back then found that 65 percent of Americans opposed moving GITMO prisoners to the U.S., and by even higher margins opposed moving the prisoners to their own states.  

One day after Senator Feinstein's trial balloon, another Senator introduced the latest amendment to prohibit closing GITMO:

The Senate late Thursday night approved a Republican amendment [to an annual defense authorization bill on the Senate floor this week] that would prohibit the transfer of terrorist detainees from Guantánamo Bay to U.S. prisons.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) introduced Amendment 3245, which would prevent the Department of Defense from using funds to move suspected terrorists from Gitmo facilities to prisons within the United States.

Kelly Ayotte is a Republican but the Senate is controlled by Democrats, and the amendment passed 54 to 41. Count that vote and see how much political will there is to close GITMO.

The defense authorization bill already contains a ban on transferring any more GITMO detainees to foreign countries. There's that political will thing, again.

Senator Feinstein might as well pull that trial balloon back down and put it away. 

Former Gitmo Detainees Excited in Palau

Progress on closing Gitmo continues at its customary glacial pace, as 6 former Guantanamo detainees resettle in Palau:

Six [Uighur] Chinese Muslims newly released from Guantanamo Bay were wide awake and excited Sunday as they traded life behind bars for rooms with ocean view in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, which agreed to a U.S. request to resettle them.

-- snip --

{Palau President Johnson] Toribiong said the Uighurs would be provided medical care, housing and education, including English lessons and instruction in skills that will help them find a job.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement it would continue to consult with Palau regarding the former detainees.

Before this transfer of the Uighurs, about 221 prisoners remained at Guantanamo.

Evidently the Uighurs overcame their original objections to refuge in Palau.

Six detainees down, only 215 more to go.

Ex-Gitmo Detainee and Rehab Dropout Killed In Saudi Arabia

A Saudi radical and al Qaeda operative whom we released from Gitmo in 2007 was killed last week in a firefight with Saudi security forces, the Christian Science Monitor reported today:

Two Yemen-based militants dressed as women, one of whom was a former Guantánamo prisoner, were intercepted at a Saudi checkpoint last week.

-- snip --

The two fighters discovered last week, Rayed Abdullahi al-Harbi and Yousef Mohammed al-Shihri, were both on a Saudi government most-wanted list issued in February. Al Shihri is a former Guantanamo detainee, and the brother-in-law of Saeed al-Shihri, the Yemen-based deputy commander of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who also was at Guantánamo, spokesman Turki said.

The Long War Journal provided some background on al Shahri:

One of the names on the Saudi most-wanted list that matches the list of Saudis repatriated from Guantánamo is Yousuf Mohammed Mubarak Al Jubairi Al Shahri. In the U.S. government's files, one of the repatriated detainee's names is given as Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri. Yussef allegedly traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan using al Qaeda's Mashhad transit hub. Once in Afghanistan, he was allegedly trained at the notorious al Farouq camp and fought against the Northern Alliance. Yussef's brother is a "known al Qaeda operative."

If the Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri identified in the U.S. government's files is the same man who is now one of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted, it is no surprise that he returned to the fight. The U.S. government identified Yussef as a hardcore ideologue who "hates all Americans because they attack his religion." The U.S. government's unclassified files note: "Since Americans are his enemy, he will continue to fight them until he dies."

Yussef al Shihri was one of the "kids of Guantanamo" - teenage battlefield detainees who were held in a separate facility apart from the rest of the Gitmo Gang - and his case received quite a bit of sympathy from the usual quarters.

According to Saudi news accounts:

Al-Shiri was transferred from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007. He was immediately put into the Ministry of Interior’s hugely successful rehabilitation program for arrested extremists.

Two years after entering the program, al Shihri had fled to Yemen where he reconnected with his al Qaeda associates, and last week he was sneaking back into the Kingdom bearing four suicide bomb vests when he was intercepted.

That "hugely successful rehabilitation program" still has some kinks to work out, obviously. Perhaps now the Obama administration will have seconds thought about trying to palm off our Yemeni detainees on the Kingdom.

Will Saudi Arabia Become the New Gitmo?

The administration continues to make progress, of a sort, on its commitment to close Gitmo. They have now resorted to begging the government of Saudi Arabia to accept our Yemeni detainees, who are the most problematic of the Gitmo Gang, into Saudi Arabia's deradicalization program. Good try, but it doesn't look like the Saudis will agree.

From today's Washington Post:

The [Saudi's success at the] rehabilitation of militants ... has convinced the Obama administration that Saudi Arabia is the ideal place to send dozens of Yemenis being held at Guantanamo.

-- snip --

As President Obama's promised January deadline to close Guantanamo approaches, the fate of 97 Yemenis remains the administration's biggest obstacle to closing the facility and forging a new detention policy. They are the largest community left at Guantanamo, roughly half of the prisoners who remain there, and are viewed as among the most radicalized, with deep jihadist roots inside Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland.

-- snip --

Publicly, Saudi officials have said they will accept the Yemenis only if they come willingly. Privately, Saudi officials interviewed here say they would like to find a different solution. If Saudi Arabia were to accept the Yemenis -- a decision that most observers say will require the blessing of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz -- it risks becoming a greater al-Qaeda target. The kingdom also has close ties to Yemen's government, which would probably consider the detainees' transfer to Saudi Arabia a public embarrassment. Yemen has publicly declared that it wants its detainees to return home.

If the Yemenis participated and then rejoined al-Qaeda, it would be a severe blow to the program as well as to the kingdom's pride.

"It's a no-win situation for the Saudis. They can't rehabilitate these guys, and they don't want to become America's jailor," said Christopher Boucek, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has studied the rehabilitation program.

Apparently, the Saudi deradicalization program depends upon a kind of social surveillance that wouldn't be available in the case of foreigners like Yemenis.

Saudi officials say their success with former [Gitmo] detainees such as [Khalid al] Jehani lies in members of his family and tribe, who keep constant watch over him, and cannot be duplicated with those whose social networks and roots lie outside Saudi Arabia.

"If I try to do something bad, my family will tell the government about me," said Jehani, who joined a radical Islamist movement in the Philippines and trained al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. "How can you trust that will happen with a family living in Yemen?"

How, indeed?

Jehani is echoing - unconsciously, I'm sure - the Victorian English politician J. A. Roebuck, who memorably nailed that same point when he argued in the parliamentary debates on the Second Reform Act of 1867, "if a man has a settled house, in which he has lived with his family for a number of years, you have a man who has given hostages to the state, and you have in these circumstances a guarantee for that man’s virtue."

Without the guarantee that would be provided by such hostages, why should the Saudis agree to take any of our Yemenis off our hands?

Gitmo's Loss is Kuwait's and Belgium's Gain

Closing Gitmo just got a tiny bit closer to reality, as two more detainees were released.

From the U.S. Department of Justice press release:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice today announced that two detainees have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the governments of Kuwait and Belgium.

-- snip --

Khalid Abdullah Mishal al Mutairi, a native of Kuwait, was transferred to the Government of Kuwait ... Another detainee was transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Belgium. Pursuant to a request from the Government of Belgium, the identity of this individual is being withheld for privacy reasons.

The press release notes that more than 550 detainees have been release since 2002. By my count, that leaves 224 more detainees to go.

Closing Gitmo: Closer to the Deadline, Further From Reality

The Washington Post reported today that the Obama administration has relieved White House Counsel Gregory Craig of responsibility for carrying out the President's commitment to close Gitmo by January 22, 2010. This strikes me as rearranging the deck chairs on the political Titanic that is the administration's self-imposed deadline.

From White House Regroups on Guantanamo:

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

To address these setbacks, the administration has shifted its leadership team on the issue. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

-- snip --

To empty the prison, the administration will need to find facilities to house 50 to 60 prisoners who cannot be released and who cannot be tried because of legal impediments, according to an administration official. The administration must also win congressional funding for the closure process, find host countries for detainees cleared for release, and transfer dozens of inmates to federal and military courts for prosecution.

Craig's explanation is priceless:

"I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives."

He thinks he may have been wrong about that "broad consensus?" Only may?

Let's see. Congress has denied the administration any funding to transfer, release or incarcerate any of the Guantanamo detainees in the United States. A Gallup poll found that by better than a 2-to-1 margin the public opposes closing Gitmo. Senior Democratic officeholders, such as the Senate Majority Leader, have spoken out in the strongest terms against bringing any Gitmo detainees to the United States. And other countries are not exactly lining up to receive our 'releasable' detainees.

Mr. Craig should have realized long ago that a consensus for closing Gitmo doesn't exist much outside of the Obama White House. He needs to get out more often.

Portugal Accepts Two Gitmo Detainees

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that two Syrian nationals have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the government of Portugal. Here's the DOJ press release.

This news made me wonder whether the open-borders EU zone will permit those two lucky Syrians to freely travel to other EU states. So I checked the Portuguese Ministry of Interior website and found it's counterpart to the DOJ press release, which says that the answer is no.

Forgive the Google language tools translation from Portuguese, which ends up sounding like Lower Slobovian, but the meaning is clear enough:

The decision on the legal regime applicable to the entry into Portugal of these people followed the provisions of Article 68., Paragraph 1 and 2 of Law 23/2007 of 4 July. The above rules provide for humanitarian reasons recognized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a special visa that allows entry into and residence in the country of foreigners.

It should be noted that this scheme remains with the Portuguese state, those citizens in need of additional visas to travel to the territory of another Member State of the Union. This restriction stems from the common understanding adopted by the Council of Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs of the European Union, held on 4 and 5 June 2009 in Luxembourg.

Congratulations DOJ! You've had a little bit of progress since the last release of six detainees back in June. Two more down, and at least 226 still to go. At this rate - eight detainees released in three months - it will take seven years to empty Gitmo of its remaining detainees, so the administration had better hustle if it wants to meet its self-imposed deadline, which is only four months away.

"Making Progress" on Closing Gitmo

The WaPo wants you to know that the Obama administration is making progress on resettling Guantanamo detainees to someplace outside of the United States, even though only eleven of them have actually been released so far and 229 remain in U.S. custody at Gitmo.

The administration has been making steady progress on this matter ever since they got into office. It's just that, as Captain Ellerby explained on page 57 of the script of that fine movie The Departed, "making progress" is a slippery concept.

COLIN

I'm not making enough progress with Costello?

ELLERBY

"Progress" is hard to define. I make progress every day. In fact, I'm making progress now. There are guys in this department make excellent progress for twenty years without ever getting anything you could definitively call a result. It's like any American industry. Nobody minds if you don't succeed as long as you don't fuck up.

In that sense of the word, "progress" is definitely being made in the business of persuading European governments to take the better sort of Gitmo detainees off of our hands.

From the WaPo story:

Six European Union countries -- Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- have accepted or publicly agreed to take detainees. Four E.U. countries have privately told the administration that they are committed to resettling detainees, and five other E.U. nations are considering taking some, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

-- snip --

Even if the administration meets its most optimistic targets for transferring prisoners to other countries, it still faces major obstacles to closing Guantanamo Bay. Of the 229 detainees held there, the cases of nearly 120 have yet to be reviewed. Officials are still deciding how to handle detainees they want to hold for a prolonged period, as well as others they want to prosecute.

Moreover, the administration is trying to determine the fate of the 98 Yemenis held at Guantanamo. Officials, wary of repatriating them to a country U.S. officials view as ill-equipped to monitor their activities, say they are negotiating with Saudi Arabia to take them.

Of the detainees cleared for release so far, 11 have been transferred home or to third countries, including Bermuda, which accepted four Chinese Uighurs.

To recap the score, there are 229 detainees, 109 of whom have evidently had their cases reviewed, 80 of which were cleared for release. Another 120 detainees, most of whom are Yemenis and therefore among the hardest of the Gitmo detainees to release, are yet to have their cases reviewed. Let's guess that only half of the last 120 cases will be ruled releasable. That would result in about 140 releasables.

Will the releasable detainees ever be accepted in Europe? A recent article in The Atlanticist suggested that Europe might not be all that eager:

On Wednesday, Ireland's Justice Department announced its intention to resettle two detainees cleared of terrorist affiliation. Add to that figure France's symbolic transfer of one prisoner in May, and the official EU total of accepted foreign prisoners stands at three. The Czech Republic, Austria and Germany have so far refused to resettle any inmates; Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Spain have each pledged to accept several under strict conditions. A modest start, for sure, but notable given Europe's reticence to help clean what is arguably America's own dirty laundry.

"America created Guantanamo. It has to come up with the solution," quipped Austrian Interior Minister Maria Fekter. "None of these prisoners has anything whatsoever to do with Denmark," echoed Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller. "Why should they be taken in?"

-- snip --

Further complicating matters, the resettlement of prisoners in individual EU member states, in theory, affects all members of the 25-country Schengen zone. The open-border EU zone permits its citizens free movement without passport checks, leaving many Europeans worried as to whether a former detainee could relocate to another country. As such, the EU has recently agreed upon a framework whereby any individual country that decides to accept prisoners share dossier information with all others beforehand. Such coordination is a "must," noted EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot, which in turn leaves open the possibility for concerned member states to "impose movement restrictions" as they see fit.

As Europe sorts out its willingness to accept further prisoners, many are left wondering why the US has yet to resettle even one inmate. Initial attempts to do so in June ended in failure when the US Congress, afraid of public backlash, enacted a law to delay the transfer of citizens to American soil for at least another two months. In addition, they stripped $50 million worth of funding for the closing of Guantanamo until after the administration submitted a detailed plan for their approval.

"If none of the U.S. states are ready to take in Guantanamo inmates, then you will have to explain to the European public why the rules for Europe should be different from those in the US," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble presaged.

I agree with Herr Minister Schaeuble. Were I a German, or an Austrian, or a Dane, I would see no compelling reason to take in any Gitmo detainee who wasn't a citizen of my country. And, as an American, I still say, let's have an orderly return of the Gitmo Gang back to their home countries, or to any other place that will accept them, whether they agree to go or not.