A new documentary alleges that detainees at Guantanamo Bay were "tortured" by being forced to listen to songs from Sesame Street for days on end.
I stumbled upon this Wikipedia entry entitled "List of Guantanamo Bay detainees". As you can see, it appears to be very detailed, complete with a section for "notes". As you can also see, missing from those "notes", are few mentions of why some of these people are at Gitmo in the first place. Further, crimes committed by Gitmo detainees after release are also ignored for teh most part. For example, right near the top of the list is Abdallah, Muhamed Hussein. This man, according to unclassified U.S. government documents, is at Gitmo because he provided information to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Ironically, a much more complete Wikipedia entry concerning Hussien can be found here, complete with details concerning Hussein's involvement with Al Qaeda.
Reviewing the "list", it doesn't take long to see that the people who are documenting this "list" are motivated by a slanted agenda designed to make these men appear to be either innocent, sympathetic, or both. Either that, or they're just not very thorough. I have my suspicions as to which.
I am asking for your help in updating the "notes" section of this Wikipedia entry. These "notes" should include, to the extent that a citing reference can be found, any information relating to the reasons for the particular individual's incarceration, statements evidencing a continued desire to serve as a terrorist, and any other significant information.
I make this call to arms with absolutely no experience with Wikipedia. I have no idea if it's even possible to update this list or whether any further input will be disallowed or censored. I simply find the lack of objectivity appalling.
I am asking you to "sponsor" a terrorist. Pick one from the list, research him, and see if there is anything you can add to this Wikipedia "list" of Gitmo detainees. It will be both a fun and rewarding experience. I can document your efforts at the newly established Big Feed message board. Please let me know which terrorist you have chosen to sponsor. Also, let me know if you run into any difficulty from Wikipedia in your efforts to update this list. Please, do not make things up. Be sure to cite your information as Wikipedia encourages. If you need help figuring out Wikipedia, let me know.
I am sponsoring the aforementioned Hussein fella. I'm sure I'll take a few others. I will report back on my results.
Thank you,
Captain Thurston
UPDATE: I was able, with not too much trouble, to update Hussein's entry. Check it out. Wikipedia editing is little strange, but doable. Worth the effort to tell the truth.
And knowing Obama, they're likely to get one.
United States President Barack Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre is a mere whitewash, Muhammad Saad, a former inmate, said on Sunday.
Saad said Obama has to apologise to the prisoners, to their families and their societies. “They have to apologise to the Muslim world and a whole generation. That’s the least he could do. He should pledge these atrocities will never be repeated and compensate those who suffered any kind of torture.”
No kidding. Murtha says these terrorists wouldn't be a problem in his racist redneck district.
Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., says he'd be willing to house prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in his congressional district if President Obama makes good on a plan to close the U.S. prison there.
As one of his first acts in office, the president circulated a draft Wednesday that would shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year.
Murtha only has a minimum security prison in his district. But he says he'd have no reservations about holding detainees there in a maximum security prison.
"Sure, I'd take 'em," said Murtha, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. "They're no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo."
Murtha added that there was "no reason not to put 'em in prisons in the United States and handle them the way they would handle any other prisoners."
Yet there are those nutroots who still contend Gitmo is populated by the innocent.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.Oh. The "rights activists" want details. Nah. The details have been out before. Read. And read. And read some more.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Morrell declined to provide details such as the identity of the former detainees, why and where they were released or what actions they have taken since leaving U.S. custody.
"This is acts of terrorism. It could be Iraq, Afghanistan, it could be acts of terrorism around the world," he told reporters.
Morrell said the latest figures, current through December 24, showed an 11 percent recidivism rate, up from 7 percent in a March 2008 report that counted 37 former detainees as suspected or confirmed active militants.
Rights advocates said the lack of details should call the Pentagon's assertions into question.
The musicians complaining should be happy anyone is listening to their crappy music.
Reprieve, a British human rights law group that represents over 30 Guantanamo Bay detainees, is planning to work with musicians to lobby President-elect Barack Obama to end the practice of sonic torture by military interrogators.
Earlier this month, Reprieve and the U.K. Musicians Union launched Zero dB, a "silent protest" over the use of music in interrogations. According to Reprieve, many of its clients have been subjected to hours of music played at deafening volume -- sometime for days or even weeks on end. And the BBC has reported on a particularly insidious practice: using the theme songs from Sesame Street and Barney to break the will of prisoners.
This has musicians furious. Last week, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails even suggested he might pursue legal action to stop the practice.
Chloe Davis, a researcher for Reprieve, told Danger Room the Zero dB campaign was planning to work with prominent musicians to lobby the incoming administration.
This may be a promising strategy. Musicians contributed mightily to the Obama campaign; and the inaugural next month is supposed to be a celebrity-studded event.
Go ahead my sprockets dancing friends. Take em' And let us know how that works out for ya.
The German government has signalled it is willing to help US President-Elect Obama make good on his promise to close the controversial terrorist prison camp Guantánamo Bay by taking in inmates.Oh, they're only going to take the "innocent" ones. I guess that makes sense.
Günther Nooke, human rights envoy for the German government, told the Frankfurter Rundschau on Friday that Germany would work together with other European states to take in innocent inmates.
“Guantánamo is an American problem, but its closure should not be hindered because no-one knows where to put the prisoners,” Nooke told the paper.
It is widely thought that Obama faces a legal headache on what to do with Guantánamo Bay. Human rights groups are calling on him to release all prisoners that cannot be tried in a public court. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who is to keep his post under Obama's presidency, called for the dissolution of the camp two years ago, but has been more reserved since. Legal experts fear that it is doubtful that any inmates could receive a fair public trial.
So this is what the office did with my "adopt a family" money?
Detention camp staff at the US Navy base in Cuba are already teaching English to the 255 inmates despite fears that it might allow them to eavesdrop on their guards.Don't you just know these fellas are some Grand Theft Auto IV playing fools?
Barack Obama, the US president-elect, has promised to close the camp, which was set up to hold foreign terrorism suspects captured after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
However, convinced that such a decision is a long way from being carried out, camp staff are attempting to soften the notoriously Spartan existence of Guantanamo inmates.
"We want to keep their brains stimulated. We're not here to give degrees," Zak, the camp's Arab-American cultural advisor, told the Miami Herald.
"Once they are engaged and busy, they leave the guards alone."
Initiatives will include circulating Egyptian newspapers and Game Boy-style electronic games around the tiny cells and holding more "movie nights" featuring pre-recorded sport.
Art and geology classes will also be offered, although the former will not include sharp objects. Prisoners are already allowed to have crayons and Zak said some were "good artists".
"They draw greeting cards for family. They draw weapons," he said. "They draw whatever they want. You can't stop a detainee from thinking." Kristin Wilhelm, a lawyer who represents Guantanamo detainees, said the cultural programme was seven years too late.
After his capture a video was found that shows Khadr toying with detonating cord as other men including Abu Laith al-Libi assemble explosives in the same house that had been destroyed in the firefight. He was also seen planting landmines while smiling and joking with the cameraman. It has been suggested that these were the same landmines later recovered by American forces on a road between Gardez and Khowst.None of that stops the left wing nutjobs from crying about his crying.
There is a pattern emerging here no?
Al Qaeda in Iraq, through its puppet organization the Islamic State of Iraq, released its latest propaganda video on June 23. The video contains a montage of attacks throughout Iraq, and features two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted strikes in Mosul. One of the operatives was released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Islamic State of Iraq used footage taken at Combat Outpost Inman by this reporter in Mosul in March of this year.This is confirmation of a story we reported on earlier here:
Two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted suicide attacks were featured at the end of the video. Abu Omar al Kuwaiti, also known as Badr Mishel Gama’an al Harbi, and Abu Juheiman al Kuwaiti, also known as Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, are both shown on the video, along with their attacks in Mosul, said Kazimi.
Ajmi was released from Guantanamo Bay and was searching for "a way to reconnect with the jihad." He claimed he was tortured while at Guantanamo Bay.
Ajmi "is seemingly responsible for an earlier truck bombing at the Iraqi Army HQ in the Harmat neighborhood of Mosul on March 23, 2008," said Kazimi. The attack occurred at Combat Outpost Inman, an Iraqi Army base that served as the headquarters for the 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division.
Thirteen Iraqi soldiers were killed and 42 were wounded after Ajmi drove an armored truck packed an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives through the gate of the outpost and detonated in a spot between the three main buildings of the compound. The blast destroyed the facades of the three buildings, including the building housing the battalion headquarters.
The last words of a suicide bomber in Mosul were a rallying cry for Muslims to join the fight against Americans.
His taking-off point was his experience at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The American military confirmed that Mr. Ajmi, a Kuwaiti, carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month. His relatives were the first to make public his death, and Kuwaiti newspapers reported on Thursday that he was one of three Kuwaiti suicide bombers involved in an attack in Mosul that killed several Iraqi soldiers.
As many as 36 former Guantánamo detainees have taken part in violent acts against Western targets after their release, a Defense Intelligence Agency report said. Their violent acts raise the question of whether the men should have been released, but also whether their detention radicalized them.
All those in opposition to Gitmo, with blood on their hands, sound off...I can't hear you...Sound off!
The last words of a suicide bomber in Mosul were a rallying cry for Muslims to join the fight against Americans.Well, let's answer the second question. They were there in the first place because they had already been "radicalized". They were kept for long periods of time because they were already "radicalized". And their detention, it was argued, should be indefinite because they were already "radicalized". So, to answer the first question as well, they should have not been released. And for those who saw it in their hearts to procure their release, there is blood on your hands. Your enlightenment has betrayed you.
His taking-off point was his experience at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The American military confirmed that Mr. Ajmi, a Kuwaiti, carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month. His relatives were the first to make public his death, and Kuwaiti newspapers reported on Thursday that he was one of three Kuwaiti suicide bombers involved in an attack in Mosul that killed several Iraqi soldiers.
As many as 36 former Guantánamo detainees have taken part in violent acts against Western targets after their release, a Defense Intelligence Agency report said. Their violent acts raise the question of whether the men should have been released, but also whether their detention radicalized them.
Yeah, well, at least you still have your head...
An Al-Jazeera cameraman recently released from the Guantanamo Bay Prison has accused the US authorities of insulting Islamic symbols.
There were "many violations -- (we were) deprived from praying and there were... deliberate insults to God's holy book, the Qur'an, at the US military prison in Guantanamo," Sami al-Hajj said from his hospital bed in Khartoum, AFP reported on Friday.
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