Guantanamo Bay Cuba is home to some of the most despicable, vile and violent people in the world. It is home to terrorists whose stated objective is to "Strike Americans wherever they are" and "does not differentiate between military and civilian targets". Al-Qaeda has taken American soldiers, businessmen and even journalists and beheaded them, afterwards posting the videos online as a recruitment tool for their organization. Al-Qaeda has taken American servicemen, cut them open, ripped out their entrails, burned their bodies and drug them through the streets of Mogadishu. Al-Qaeda has bombed innocent civilians in New York, Washington DC, London, Madrid, Bali, Kenya and Tanzania. Al-Qaeda is responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide dating back to the early 1990's. Al-Qaeda would like nothing more than to cut off the heads of Americans and send the heads to our mothers in baskets. These are the kinds of people who call Gitmo home.
Since the War on Terror began in earnest in 2001, America has been faced with an unusual question. What to do with POWs when the people you are fighting are not representatives of a nation or state. The Department of Justice under George Bush concluded that because these terrorists were captured on the battlefield trying to kill American servicemen that they could be held as "enemy combatants". After all, the Geneva Convention and the UN Treaty regarding the rules of warfare were written under the assumption that wars were fought between 2 or more sovereign nations, not by highly skilled and organized terrorist cells fighting under many different flags. At the peak of Gitmo's operation there were around 750 terrorists held at the prison. There are currently roughly 250 "enemy combatants" still being held there. Barack Obama, more concerned with what Europe thinks of America than protecting America's citizens, has promised to close Gitmo since he announced his candidacy for the Presidency. There is one small problem, however, and that is what to do with the 250 highly dangerous individuals still being held in Cuba.
I have never been inside Gitmo nor have I been inside a US Federal Supermax prison but if given the choice, I would choose Gitmo 100 times out of 100. The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay receive 3 hot meals per day, they are free to practice their religion freely, they receive the best medical care in the world courtesy of the American taxpayer and they get time outside of their cells each day to exercise. In short, they receive the best treatment of any POW's in history of human warfare.
Some of these "enemy combatants such as Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Ramsi bin-Alshib were rather high ranking members of Al-Qaeda. They were privy to such information such as when the next terrorist attack against the US would happen and where that attack would take place. CIA operatives, with the blessing of the Department of Justice, Nancy Pelosi and other high ranking Dems in Congress as well as President Bush himself, were charged with interrogating these "enemy combatants" for information they may have had regarding future terror attacks. Approved interrogation techniques included waterboarding, putting a caterpillar in the cell of a man afraid of bugs, creating "movie quality walls designed to make loud thuds when struck", "placing one hand on each side of a terror suspect's shirt and pulling them toward you" and "wearing the same outfit as the terrorist being questioned". I refuse to call them "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" because they are not enhanced, defined by the dictionary as "to make greater, as in value, beauty, or effectiveness; augment", they are just techniques. Far left groups such as the ACLU, Amnesty International and the European Commision on Human Rights claim that these techniques are considered "torture". I seriously would like one of these groups to honestly answer how we expect to get pertinent iformation, which could save thousands of lives, without even the slightest bit of intimidation. Maybe we should just ask them very politely to please tell us how they plan on murdering thousands of our citizens in the near future. If they want to see torture, and I mean REAL torture, maybe they should've seen our servicemen in Vietnam when they have battery cable attached to their genitals while electricity passed through, or when Sadaam Hussein hammered nails under the fingernails of his political opponents in order to make them talk. They should've been there when the Japanese made our men walk 60 miles in the Bataan Death March, killing 1 in 4 along the way, or when the Janjaweed in Darfur use repeated gang rape as a weapon of fear in their quest to kill all the Christians in the Sudan. Torture is defined by the dictionary as "anguish of body or mind...the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure". Waterboarding or simlated drowning does not cause agony or pain, it doesn't "afford sadistic pleasure". Waterboarding is simply NOT torture.
Barack Obama says that Guantanamo Bay is "the best recruiting tool Al-Qaeda has ever had and a black eye for America around the world". I'm sure the terrorists know that Obama is now our President and is in the process of closing down the prison. So, will Al-Qaeda stop the attacks once the prison is closed? I doubt it. Gitmo and the methods of interrogation used there have kept America safe from terror attacks ever since 9/11. Why would we now stop using a base that has been effective for us? The only logical answer is that Barack Obama is playing politics with the safety of American lives. Since taking the oath of office, Barack Obama has told terrorists the techniques America will use should they be captured, he has officially dropped the term "enemy combatants" and "War on Terror" from the English lexicon for the more PC "Ongoing global operations".
The left in this country is the sole reason that America, both economically and militarily, has lost its foothold as the "Shining City on a Hill" as Ronald Reagan described us. America would have had absolutely no chance of victory in WWII had the left existed back then as it does today. Can you imagine a senior senator in the early 1940's saying "our boys fighting in Europe are murederers killing innocent women and children" or some group coming out and saying "If you use the terms "Kraut" to describe the Germans or "Japs" to describe the Japanese you may be charged with using hate speech" or some media outlet knowingly using forged documents in order to discredit FDR? We would be speaking German right now if the far left existed back then as it does today.
The fact is that we have not been attacked since 9/11 thanks to the efforts of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Whether you like them or not, they kept you and I safe. Now Barack Obama is dismanteling almost every policy that led directly to our safety. If America gets hit again on Obama's watch, then he will have a lot to answer for. This is not a battle in which we can afford to be politically correct or worry about hurting soemone's delicate sensitivities. We are fighting an enemy that wants to kill us pure and simple. And Barack Obama is doing everything he can to give them what they want.
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