What do Talibanites when they are released from Guantanamo? Uhhh …

A Taliban commander who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2001, imprisoned at Guantanamo, and released in 2007, is now leading Taliban fighters against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Andy McCarthy cares:

So we had in our custody a top commander of the Taliban, against which we have been at war for eight years and which, far from surrendering, has continued fighting and killing American troops throughout that time. But because Guantanamo Bay is purportedly a blight on our reputation in the international community (whatever that means), and because we have thus been under pressure from the Left to shut it down, we released the said top Taliban commander even as things were getting worse in Afghanistan. He, as anyone might have predicted, has gone straight back to the jihad. Now things have gotten so bad we’ve had to send more troops, and the guy we released is playing a key role fortifying enemy forces and helping them prepare roadside and suicide bombings against the increased forces we’re sending.

[end of quote.]

In this instance, however, the enemy was released on GW Bush’s watch, not Obama’s. Why was he released?

What we needed and need to do is kill all Taliban and al Qaeda members when they come into our power, or kill them as soon as we get useful information from them. They are unregenerate enemies of mankind and must be treated accordingly. But we’re not constructed that way.

* * *

LA wrote to Andrew McCarthy:

Unbelievable. Any idea why he was released?

AM replied:

Here’s a story about him.

If I had to guess, I would imagine that the Bush admin (esp Condi) were reacting (i.e., overreacting) to a Seton Hall study, the “Denbeaux Study,” which essentially claimed that all the Afghans turned over to us by the Northern Alliance were innocent farmers who were entrapped in the Northern Alliance’s effort to collect a bounty from the CIA for each captive.

Of course, the academics at Seton Hall were voluntarily representing combatants held at Gitmo, so what the hell did the Bushies think they were going to say in their “study”?

I don’t know any of the above for a fact. It’s just a hypothesis.

LA replied:

This is terrible.

When we arrest them, we have to go by the word of Northern Alliance people who have a monetary interest in our arresting them. And when we decide to release them, we go by the word of leftwing lawyers.

But if he was held from 2001 to 2007, six years, we must have had actual evidence on him, not just the word of his captors.

AM replied:

The sad fact is, we’ve released plenty of guys we had evidence against—probably not enough to convict in court (although there was certainly enough proof to convict Binyam Mohammed, who was nonetheless recently released to the Brits). Most of the evidence we have comes from foreign intelligence services and interrogations—and not usually anything that comes close to “torture,” but would still be inadmissible in court because it’s not Miranda-generated. It won’t hold up under the standards applicable at American criminal trials, but it easily satisfies the law-of-war basis for detaining enemy combatants.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 29, 2009 06:44 PM | Send