Finding bin Laden

One of the memes going around is that "every credible source" says waterboarding didn't help find bin Laden, and probably slowed down the hunt.

Among non-credible sources must be CIA chief Leon Panetta:

Today reported:

Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.

Panetta, who in a 2009 CIA confirmation hearing declared “waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong,” said Tuesday that debate about its use will continue.

“Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question,” Panetta said.

(Gateway Pundit)

For Pittsburg Steelers fans from Rio Linda, "open question" means anyone who says he absolutely knows the answer one way or the other is wrong.

Gateway also links to Don Rumsfeld:

Bill O'Reilley: number 1: how do you feel aobut Alan Colmss and others on the left using you to make their assertions against coerced interrogation?
Donald Rumsfeld: Well, it's the first time I've ever heard of Alan Colmes using me to support a position of his. But the fact is that the information was garbled. I think what I said was that there was no waterboarding at Guantanimo, and omebody else said that a Guantanimo detainee who had been waterboarded provided important information, and the connection created a disconnect, because the people who were waterboarded were three people -- by the CIA, none of whom were waterboarded at Guantanamo, and none of whom were waterboarded by the military. ...
Bill O'Reilley: OK, so there was confusion about the context of your remarks, which happens, you know, all the time, all the time, and it was seized upon by Alan and others on the left to say, "you know what, even Rumsfeld says it didn't it." But I said, quite responsibly I believe, that since I hadn't talked with you directly, I'm not taking some secondary source, that as you said, garbled up what your original remarks were. Now the most important thing. You just heard Barack Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Vice President say flat out that coerced interrogation doesn't work. We now know that is false. It does work. Correct?
Donald Rumsfeld: Unquestionably, it works. And the problem I have with the discussion thus far is that people are equating waterboarding with torture, and I think that's a mistake. The President of the United States authorized waterboarding, it was done to three people by the CIA, not by the military, and it produced an enormous amount of very valuable intelligence information by the testimony of George Tenet, by the testimony of CIA director Mike Hayden, and by others who had a chance to review the information.
Bill O'Reilley: How about you? Did you see that intel?
Donald Rumsfeld: Yes. I've certainly been made aware of the intelligence information that came from those sources and others.
Bill O'Reilley: OK, that being said, then, you cited two names in the CIA and yourself as primary sources that coerced interrogation provided information that protected America. Correct?
Donald Rumsfeld: Correct.
Bill O'Reilley: You cited the sources, and the sourcing is correct. So then...
(crosstalk)
Bill O'Reilley: We saw what Leon Panetta said about this incident. OK, now. So then you hear the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State flat out deny what it looks to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That worries me.
Donald Rumsfeld: Well, in my view, we very likely would not have captured or killed Osama bin Laden had we not had the intelligence information we have.
Bill O'Reilley: OK, but does it worry you that the top three people in the government are saying you know, even though Rumsfeld and everybody else, Tenet, says it, we still don't believe it. Doesn't that worry you?
Donald Rumsfeld: Did they say that recently, or when they were Sena(tors)?
Bill O'Reilley: No, no, but they didn't repudiate it, they should have come out and said "hey, I was wrong, this intel.." Instead, the talking point's from Washington, "It was a mosaic. It was a mosaic of information." They're bending over like pretzels trying to get away from the coerced interrogation deal. You know what they're doing, it's the Washington spin-around.
Donald Rumsfeld: Well of course, it is a mosaic in a sense that you take pieces of information and no one in isolation is determinative, but taken together it produces the outcome and if some of that, as Director Pineta says, came from the enhanced interrogations, the waterboarding, then in fact the mosaic would not have produced the outcome, and you would not have been able to get bin Laden.
Bill O'Reilley: But you're not going to get that admission from this administration, are you?
Donald Rumsfeld: Maybe not. Although in fact what they've done is they've reversed themselves on most of the things they attacked during the campaign. On indefinite detention, Guantanimo bay, military commission, the patriot act, all of these things they campaigned against, and yet now, once they're governing, I think they realize that those are things that President Bush's administration put into place and they're protecting the American people.
Bill O'Reilley: I hope they realize it. I hope so. Now I think, to be fair, you and I have to take Colmes out for dinner, since he made us look good at the expense of himself. All right, the book is Known and Unknown, it was a pleasure...

The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth

Yoo and Delahunty: The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth - WSJ.com

...the president's embrace of the left's terrorism-as-crime theories collided with his responsibility to protect a great nation. Now the reality of the ongoing war on terror is helping to shatter the Gitmo myth and end its distortion of our antiterrorism strategies.

This week the intelligence community reported to Congress that one-quarter of the detainees released from Guantanamo in the past eight years have returned to the fight. Though the U.S. and its allies have killed or recaptured some of these 150 terrorists, well over half remain at large. The Defense Department reports that Gitmo alumni have assumed top positions in al Qaeda and the Taliban, attacked allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and led efforts to kill U.S. troops.

Even that 25% recidivism rate is likely too low. The intelligence community reports that it usually takes about two and a half years before a released detainee shows up on its radar. Our forces probably have yet to re-engage most of the terrorists among the 66 detainees released so far by the Obama administration.

The Bush administration released many more, but those freed by this administration are likely more dangerous. Contrary to the Gitmo myth, innocent teenagers and wandering goat herders do not fill the base. Last May, an administration task force found that of the 240 detainees at Gitmo when Mr. Obama took office, almost all were leaders, fighters or organizers for al Qaeda, the Taliban or other jihadist groups. None was judged innocent.

....

In the Gitmo myth, President George W. Bush was a Lone Ranger acting without Congressional permission, and Gitmo was a law-free zone. But the American people never opposed capturing and detaining the enemy. And now Democratic Congress has ratified Mr. Bush's policy.

Freezing the Gitmo status quo will stop the release of al Qaeda killers, but it won't end the serious distortions in Mr. Obama's terrorism policy.

The administration relies on unmanned drones to kill al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan and Afghanistan. CIA Director Leon Panetta calls it "the only game in town." Drones take no prisoners, but they also ask no questions. Firing missiles from afar cannot substitute for the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders for intelligence. (The real question now is whether CIA agents will decline to interrogate prisoners, thanks to Mr. Holder's criminal investigations into Bush policies.)

As long as no one is sent to Gitmo, the Obama administration will leave itself two options for dealing with terrorists: kill, or catch-and-release. Mr. Obama's drone-heavy policy means that more people will die—not only al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, but also innocent Afghan and Pakistani civilians.

The Gitmo myth also drove the Justice Department's push to prosecute al Qaeda leaders in U.S. civilian courts. Nowhere else did the Obama administration place its view of terrorism more clearly on display as a law-enforcement problem. The near-acquittal of Ahmed Ghailani, the al Qaeda operative who facilitated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, by a New York jury last month has clearly revealed that path as a dead end—even if Mr. Holder remains in denial.

The simple alternative is to continue detentions at Gitmo. Detention is consistent with the rules of war, which allow captured combatants to be held indefinitely without requiring criminal charges to be filed. It also keeps our troops and agents in the field focused on finding and killing the enemy, not on collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses.

....

After the left's long denunciation of Bush-era policies, Mr. Obama should admit that he has made his share of mistakes—not the least of which has been propagating the Gitmo myth. If Americans die at the hands of released detainees, we will know who to blame.

Gitmo files

Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard suggests we not take the interviews with people just released from Gitmo at face value.  At the very least, their testimony has not been consistent.

 

On Sunday night, CNN ran part of an interview with a Uighur named Khalil Abdul Nasser. Until just a few days ago, Nasser was detained at Guantanamo. Nasser's transfer to Bermuda, along with three of his fellow Uighurs, has caused a storm of controversy on the tiny resort island. So, Nasser wanted to quell any doubts about his innocence.

Regarding allegations that he attended a terrorist training camp, Nasser (speaking through a translator) said: "This is not true, because I have never been in any kind of training camp."

....

[Nasser] did not always dispute this. During his combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at

Gitmo, Nasser freely admitted that he once trained at the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement's (ETIM's) Tora Bora training camp.

The transcript of Nasser's CSRT session at Gitmo, who was then known by his alias, Abdul Helil Mamut, is readily available on the New York Times's web site. (See here.) A U.S. military tribunal alleged: "The Detainee arrived at the Uighur Tora Bora training camp on 17 June 2001." Nasser responded, "That's correct. The name Tora Bora is used in the accusation, but it is not correct." (He later claimed he may have arrived earlier in June of 2001.)

Other Uighur detainees held at Gitmo, like Nasser, said they were not familiar with the name Tora Bora. It may be that the camp was not known to them as the "Tora Bora training camp," as described by the government. But, that is clearly where they were. Their descriptions of the camp match it precisely and, as described below, Nasser admitted he was in the Tora Bora mountains during the beginning of the U.S. bombing campaign in 2001. Nasser also admitted he was at the Tora Bora facility, after initially disputing its name.

Nasser did not say who ran the Tora Bora training camp during his CSRT session. But it is clear, based on the testimony of at least eight other Uighurs, including Hozaifa Parhat, that Abdul Haq ran the camp.

There is no real material dispute, then, that the camp was run by an al Qaeda terrorist. And Nasser lived and was trained at this camp.

A statement by the Uighur detainees' attorney and Nasser's newfound denial do not change these simple facts.

CNN, like most other news organizations, could not be bothered to do some basic fact checking of the Uighurs' story. If the news channel had, then perhaps it would not have presented their claims unchallenged.

 

 

Club Gitmo

A letter in the Wall Street Journal:

David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey are right in pointing out the drawbacks in closing Guantanamo ("Why It's So Hard to Close Gitmo," op-ed. May 30). One more comes to my mind: Although the hostile press depicts this detention center as nothing less than an American version of a concentration camp, for at least one woman in Russia it is a place where she is delighted to have her son confined.

A Reuters dispatch from Moscow, dated Aug. 8, 2003, reported that Amina Khasanova, whose son was a detainee there, told a Russian newspaper that she was "terribly scared of a Russian prison or a Russian court" for him and hence presumably was in no hurry to have him released. "At Guantanamo they treat him humanely, the conditions are fine," she said.

Her son, Andrei Bakhitov, one of the eight Russian detainees at Guantanamo, had written her: "I think that there is not even a health resort in Russia on the level of this place."

Richard Pipes

Cambridge, Mass.

Inside Gitmo

The website, with the documentation for the book .

Releases from Gitmo

From AP News:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — As visiting journalists walked by, two of the inmates held up sketch pads on which they had scribbled "We need freedom." One of them shouted: "Is Obama communist or democrat?"

The protesters were Uighurs, Chinese Muslims swept up in the Bush administration's Afghanistan war, and their brief protest was indicative of the frustration building up in the Guantanamo Bay prison over the likelihood that freedom will take longer than they expected after Barack Obama became president and ordered the prison closed by January.

In Obama's less than five months in office, the U.S. military has opened communal spaces and started building a new classroom in the prison, and some cell blocks now have satellite television, DVDs and wireless headphones. But nearly half the detainees are still locked up alone for most of the day, and one of every eight prisoners is on hunger strike.

Shane Kadidal, who meets with detainees as an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said expectations for dramatic change have ebbed. He said prisoners know that only two prisoners have been released since Obama took office, compared with more than 500 under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

"They're saying, 'At least Bush sent some people home,'" he said.

Some inmates report an increase in hostilities as guards clash with inmates counting down the months to the January deadline.

"Oppression has increased," wrote Adnan Latif, a Yemeni detainee, in an April letter shortly before he slashed his wrist while meeting his attorney. "The best thing that I can hope for is death."

On Monday night a Yemeni detainee was found dead in his cell, an "apparent suicide," the military said.

Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, a 31-year-old Yemeni, had been held here since February 2002 and was the fifth apparent suicide in the prison. Like most Guantanamo inmates, he was never charged.

The U.S. is seeking foreign governments willing to take in some of Guantanamo's remaining 240 detainees. It plans to keep holding about 65 prisoners slated for prosecution and dozens of other al-Qaida and Taliban suspects who cannot be tried for lack of evidence or other reasons.

Inside Gitmo

insidegitmo.com

A fine legal mess

Dafydd at Big Lizards looks at the legal mess that has arisen in the cases at Gitmo.

The Gitmo Orders

From NRO

The executive orders President Obama signed Thursday regarding the detention and interrogation of detainees in the War on Terror reflect an emerging Obama style: What is said is more rhetorical than illuminating—and what is most important is left unsaid.

Take Guantanamo Bay, the oft-maligned subject of the first order. In announcing the closure of the prison there, the president forcefully asserted that he was following through on a campaign commitment. But the order only promises that the facility will be closed within a year—a nonbinding deadline Obama could extend simply by signing another order. That's not exactly the immediate shuttering his antiwar base was clamoring for, and such delay would be intolerable if Obama really believed Gitmo were the travesty he has portrayed it as.
....
So to summarize: We'd love to close Guantanamo, but we can't right now; we'd love to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo, but other countries don't want them; we'd love to give every detainee a civilian trial, but we don't have enough evidence; we'd love to release the detainees we can't charge with crimes, but our intelligence tells us they're dangerous, so doing so would be irresponsible; and we'd love to stick to the highly civilized, detainee-friendly interrogation practices approved by the Army Field Manual, but every now and then there may be an emergency when something more severe is warranted.

 

Underneath all the lofty rhetoric, we're gratified to see that this is change George W. Bush could believe in.

Gitmo

Prairie Pundit spots an article by James Robbins about Gitmo:

President Obama has issued an executive order making good on his promise to close down America's detainee facility at Guantánamo Bay, though not as rapidly as his supporters wanted. While activists will hail this as a major step towards dismantling the Bush administration's wartime policies, the Guantánamo they object to exists more as reputation than reality. To many, the name Guantánamo screams "No Due Process!" "Torture!" and "War Crimes!" But Camp Delta is the most humane facility of its type in the history of warfare.

The detainees are given immaculately clean clothes and living spaces. Their meals are balanced, nutritious, and halal—detainees weigh more upon release than upon arrival. They receive the same medical care as our service personnel. And the inmates' religious practices are given great deference, to the point where it works counter to the mission of the facility. To the terrorists, Islam is more ideology than faith; it's an operational code and methodology for promoting cohesion and radical identity. From this standpoint, giving al-Qaeda members copies of the Koran could have the same results as giving Nazi POWs a copy of Mein Kampf. Our indulgent policy in this regard has actively bolstered the terrorists' morale, group solidarity, and ability to resist the legitimate intelligence objectives of the entire enterprise. We knew that it would, but we have let them practice their religion nonetheless.

Stand that against some of the invidious comparisons of the last few years, such as "The American Gulag." Somewhere in heaven Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is chuckling with a wry smile at the members of the useful-idiot Western intelligentsia who came up with that one. The absurdity—and obscenity—of the comparison is obvious to anyone with even the most limited knowledge of the two institutions. The fact that such charges make effective propaganda is mostly a testament to the propensity of the media to reflexively grasp at the sensational, and of partisan politicians to stoke unwarranted outrage for political gain. The same is true of comparisons to Nazi concentration camps, where inmates tended not to find the kosher option.

Holder on Gitmo

From Powerline:

Cliff May (via the Wall Street Journal) calls attention to this statement from 2002 by Eric Holder, Obama's nominee for Attorney General:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention. . .you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

The salient point about this quotation is not that it's from Holder, but that it's from 2002. The view that we had better extract information from the high-value Gitmo detainees and should not be precluded from doing so by the Geneva Convention was widely held in the period shortly following 9/11. And no sane person with hopes of one day becoming the nation's chief law enforcement official would have publicly advocated a position different from the one Holder set forth.

It will be interesting to hear what he has to say now.

Obama and Gitmo

From Captain Ed Morrissey, here:

I noted that Barack Obama's team has started hinting that they will move back towards John McCain's position on interrogation techniqiues.  Now supporters of Obama who have criticized the Bush administration's position on indefinite detention have begun rethinking that policy as well:
....

"You can't be a purist and say there's never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone," said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.

You can't?  That's all we've heard from the close-Gitmo crowd for the last seven years.  Indefinite detention supposedly violates American values, we're losing the war if we adapt to the threat against us, blah blah blah.  Certainly Barack Obama never gave any indication of nuanced thinking along the lines of indefinite detention during the last two years while campaigning for the presidency.  In fact, Obama made the absolutist case that Cole now belatedly rejects in June 2007:

"While we're at it," he said, "we're going to close Guantanamo. And we're going to restore habeas corpus. … We're going to lead by example _ by not just word but by deed. That's our vision for the future.

Now that Obama has to live with these decisions and not simply snipe from the sidelines, the game appears to have changed.

Gitmo

We'll Be Greeted As Liberators   [Byron York]

The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama really, really wants to close Guantanamo:

Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect. They believe the move would create a global wave of diplomatic and popular goodwill that could accelerate the transfer of some detainees to other countries.

The article concedes that there will be problems involved.  And not too long ago, the New York Times did a front-page story upon discovering that Guantanamo is filled with bad people who are both difficult to deport and house in the United States.  But the goodwill!

 When Clinton took office in 1992, people who were normally horrified at the display of military aircraft flying overhead reminded each other, "those are our planes now."  Do they now call Gitmo "our" prison camp?

Habeas

Reason Magazine has an article on the Boumediene decision.

Habeas Crappus

Tom DeLay posts his thoughts on the Boumediene v. Bush decision:

Neither the United States military, its elected commanders in the executive branch, nor its representatives in Congress are now in control of America’s prosecution of the war on terror. Justice Kennedy is, or he seems to think.

Until he is disabused of this notion by a Congress with the guts to assert itself, the following not only may happen, but will, and very quickly:

- Captured terrorists will refuse to answer any questions without access to a lawyer;

- Captured terrorists will demand the public disclosure of the military’s evidence against them, thus exposing the means and methods employed by our intelligence community to gather such evidence;

- Captured terrorists will demand to confront their accusers, who will be soldiers on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, in open court back here in the states; and,

- Captured terrorists will go venue shopping, filing their habeas claims in dozens of courts in hopes of getting the most liberal activist judge they can find.

Unless, I suppose, terrorists suddenly start fighting to the death in the battlefield.

The question is, what are conservative legislators going to do about it. Beginning in 1996 and continuing throughout the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, we had an aggressive, concrete agenda to combat judicial activism and supremacy.

Because Congress creates lower federal courts, Congress can also set its jurisdiction. Thus, except for the narrow field of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction – cases involving individual states, ambassadors, and the like – Congress can simply remove the Supreme Court from the picture. A “court stripping” strategy would reassert the legislative and executive branches’ co-equal status as interpreters of the Constitution. Much of the groundwork has already been set.

Notice, by the way, what is not being considered.

We're not hearing anyone say, "They have made their ruling, now let them enforce it."

Nor, despite the ravings of the "911 Truth" or "BusHitler" crowd, does anyone seem the least bit worried that Justice Kennedy is going to disappear some night.

Murtha and Pelosi -- architects of defeat?

From today's Washington Times:

Mr. Murtha plans to offer three amendments to the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill: One would set a 60-day timeline to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (which will certainly help al Qaeda and the like in planning the Rwanda-ization of the country). A second Murtha amendment would implement the Pennsylvania Democrat's "slow-bleed" strategy for ensuring a U.S. military defeat by conditioning funds for the war upon the military meeting some unattainable standards for training and equipping the troops. Should the administrate violate the strictures in an effort to reinforce besieged American soldiers or prevent genocide, we have no doubt that if the Democrats are still in the majority that they will be holding oversight hearings and issuing subpoenas to U.S. military commanders and senior Pentagon officials, summoning them to testify about "why they broke the law" by sending these soldiers to the battlefield.

Mr. Murtha's third amendment would close the Guantanamo Bay facility. He hasn't said precisely what he wants to do with these terrorists, but his Democratic colleagues have weighed in, including Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia (who has been perhaps the most fervent congressional advocate of shutting down Gitmo) as well as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.

Double standards on torture

(Hat tip: Don Surber.)

MAY 24--In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here.

The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here. (12 pages)

And:

What was Amnesty International’s reaction? cricket chirp

Yet Amesty International just 3 days ago called for the US to close Guantanamo Bay.

Where did USA Today play the torture book story?

Not on Page One.

Where did the New York Times play it?

Not on Page One.

Where did the Washington Post play it?

Not on Page One.

And yet such false stories as the “flushed Koran” got widespread play in the newspapers and on television.

Our treatment of terrorists

Remember Abu Ghraib? How about the tales of abuse at Guantanamo Bay? Maybe you've heard the statements by the likes of Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, and Nancy Pelosi? According to these notables, our treatment of detainees is a taint on our reputation, and is reminiscent of the Soviet Gulag or Pol Pot's killing fields. Kennedy claims that the only thing that's changed at Abu Ghraib is that it's now under new management.

Congressman Tom Tancredo states that in the wake of a terrorist nuclear strike on US cities, bombing Mecca would not be out of the question. People on all sides of the poliitical spectrum erupt in outrage.

To be sure, a nuclear strike on a Muslim holy site would almost certainly be counter-productive. However, if one of our major cities were vaporized, I suspect our leaders would be very hard pressed to do anything but launch a strike. Public pressure to "do something" would be very strong.

Nor is this my idea alone.

Regardless of how we feel now about the treatment of terrorists, and suspected terrorists, I can envision a day when Americans will care less about interrogation techniques used in the quest to get intelligence about terrorists. That day will be when there's a chemical or biological attack in one of our cities that kills and injures tens of thousands of Americans.

...snip...

If there's a biological or chemical terrorist attack, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Americans, how much would you care about "our reputation and how we are viewed in the Muslim world"?

And indeed, if the worst happens, the citizens of the US may decide they're tired of all this hand-wringing over what the Arab Street thinks. They may decide it's time the world started wringing its hands over what the American Street thinks.

Bad idea? Bad policy? I suspect it is. But when patience runs out, don't count on rational behavior.

And a word to the Islamic community:

There's an important terrorism issue for Muslim communities, especially those residing in Western countries. They should be concerned about backlash and retaliation against Muslims in the wake of a large-scale disaster. Muslims must in no uncertain terms make it clear, as have spokesmen for the Free Muslim Coalition (www.freemuslims.org), that the terrorists do not speak for them, and they must report terrorists within their communities.

And Muslims can't hide behind assertions that the media is biased against them. They need to do what it takes to make their voices heard in spite of the obstacles.

Frankly, the Muslim community has demonstrated that it can make its voice heard. If a news magazine reports that someone may have carried a copy of the Koran over a spot where a black cat once crossed, riots break out and people are killed. Muslims know how to get attention for their views.

To all those Muslims who object to terrorism done in the name of their religion and their god, I say they need to make their voices heard. Otherwise, why should anyone assume they exist?

Abuse at Gitmo

Gordon Cucullu looks at the abuse that goes on every day at Guantanamo.

Many of the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees fight their captors at every opportunity. They attack guards whenever the soldiers enter their cells, trying to reach up under protective face masks to gouge eyes and tear mouths. They make weapons and try to stab the guards or grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food. These terrorist prisoners openly brag of their desire to kill Americans. One has promised that if he is released he would find MPs in their homes through the Internet, break into their houses at night and 'cut the throats of them and their families like sheep.' These recalcitrant detainees are known euphemistically as being "non-compliant."

And the treatment this behavior brings?

Yet these thugs are treated with an amazing degree of compassion: They are given ice cream treats and recreational time. They live in clean facilities, and receive a full Muslim religious package of Koran, prayer rug, beads, and prayer oils. An arrow in every cell points to Mecca. The call to prayer is played five times daily. They are not abused, hanged, tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated or in any way treated the way that they once treated their own captives or now treat their guards.

The detention facility at Guantanamo is not a prison. I suspect anyone who was "non-compliant" in that fashion in a prison would soon find himself in solitary confinement, with a number of extra years added to his sentence. The detainees at Guantanamo are free to attack and harass their guards the way they do because there's so little cost to that behavior.

The Gitmo Cookbook

Several hundred recipes prepared for the inmates at the camp are to be published next month in "The Gitmo Cookbook," including dishes such as mustard-and-dill baked fish and honey-and-ginger chicken breast.

Laura Curtis, one of the book's editors, says the recipes would "make a point about how well we are treating these people." Freed prisoners are said to have put on an average of nearly 14 pounds during captivity.

"We feel that the word 'torture' is a serious abuse of the language when you apply it to what's going on at Gitmo," she says. "We're pretty tired of the military-bashing that we see in the news."

On testing the recipes, one member of the book team disliked the glazed carrots but says the carrots "did not sink to the level of torture."

Well, maybe not to the book team. Small children, on the other hand, are notorious for their dislike of vegetables.