Oh August, Please Go

Man...it's August; I'm distracted and unfocused.

Well, I'm really focused on work right now and getting the school year off to a good start.  There are a lot of little details, procedures, and paperwork that need to be handled.  That's consuming a lot of my energy right now.  It'll level off, soon.

I just can't write about this mosque anymore.  It's such a cut and dry issue to me, I just can't continue writing about how morally wrong it is for this mosque to happen.  Bride of Rove nailed it for me today on this issue:

Ground Zero Victory Mosque? I’m against it. Had they named it anything but the Cordoba Project and insisted on dedicating it on 9-11 and if they had more than $17k in the bank with the funding coming from mystery money and had Atlas Shrugs not uncovered the truth about the Imam in charge – meh – maybe. But given all that? Who the hell out there can support it other than on the lame-assed “It’s legal” defense? It’s offensive and aweful and should be shut down before the first brick is touched

Read what she wrote and know my response is "what she said!"

I'm also really interested in this post by Chris Harnisch regarding Yemen, but alas, I'm unfocused.  I can't force my grey matter to delve deeply enough into it to matter right now.

You know, I had an email conversation with a friend this weekend about blogging; how do you keep going when it all just gets silly and redundant and you get to the point where you can't even make it relevant anymore.  I finally decided, it's just August.  It'll come back around.

Right now what I'm really focused on is my Stieg Larsson series.  I read the first book, as you know.  Then I read the second one and when I finished it Sunday night I was all, "What the HELL!  How can he leave me like this!"  Thank goodness I'm reading them so far behind everyone else because now I have all three.  If I'd had to wait several months before getting my hands on book number three, I'd be furious!  He SOOOOOOO left me hanging.  Tsk, tsk.

So I'm just beginning book three, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and...well, I'm focused on THAT.  I can't wait to find out what happens to Lisbeth Salander.  (Please don't tell me!).  As I finish them I pass them off to my brother; he's equally enthralled.

But, you know, if I was focused enough to blog about something it might be this post from Hot Air about Charlie Crist's sinking fortunes.  Heh!

Or I'd especially like to cover this one about the moratorium.  Via The Wall Street Journal,:

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn't trust the industry's safety equipment and the government's own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Oh man.  That one's gonna hurt...; Michelle Malkin weighed in on this one, here.

And consider this, although at this point, it's just rumor because I haven't confirmed it in great detail, but according to a source, he told me his firm has been "rehiring" workers that were "laid off" some sixty days ago because for each "new hire" there is a $5000 tax credit under Obama's jobs program.

WTF?  Can you do that?  PolitiFact says:

With his first year in office under his belt and unemployment still high, President Barack Obama called for additional help for the economy through a tax credit for businesses that add jobs...The tax credit would be $5,000 for every new worker employed in 2010. It would be capped at $500,000 per firm.

Hmph.  No potential for fraud there, no?  

I don't think I WANT to focus on the possibilities there...

Meanwhile, Obama's index is -14 today as he chips away on the greens on Martha's Vineyard and the rest of us squabble over jobs and mosques and the country goes to hell in a handbasket. 

Ah, August.

Please go away.

Rehab in Yemen

I hate to be negative. Really, I do.

Yemen will begin building an $11 million rehabilitation centre for returning Guantanamo detainees in three months when it expects to receive funding from the United States, a government official said on Wednesday.

There are 91 Yemeni detainees left in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Washington suspended transfers to Yemen this month because of a deteriorating security situation in the country, in the throes of a crackdown on a resurgent al Qaeda.

I hate to say something isn't going to work from the outset.

But seriously, what could go wrong?

News Flash: No More Terrorists in Afghanistan!

Apparently Martha Coakley has the inside scoop that the terrorists have all left Afghanistan, per this from The Weekly Standard:

MODERATOR: “Do you think we should withdraw? [from Afghanistan]”

COAKLEY: “I think we should plan an exit strategy, yes.”

MODERATOR: “And how would we succeed?”

COAKLEY: “I am not sure there is a way to succeed. If the goal was and the vision in Afghanistan was to go in because we believe the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists, we supported that, I supported that goal. They are gone, they are not there anymore, they are in apparently Yemen and Pakistan. Let’s focus our efforts on where Al Qaeda is.”

That's from last night's debate between Coakley and Scott Brown.

So is she suggesting that we invade Yemen and Pakistan? Is she saying we should pull out of Afghanistan, because there aren't anymore terrorists there, and move on out to Yemen and Pakistan?

Because if that's what she's saying, I can see completely why Scott Brown raised over a million dollars yesterday. And with lines like this one, he'll probably keep raising money:



More at Memeorandum.

The Trouble With Yemen...

With increased attention on Yemen over the past couple of weeks, there have been a series of interesting pieces about the state of the country.

First take a look at this policy brief (pdf) from the Center for a New American Security. It's dated November 2009 and takes a look at the various problems facing Yemen today:

In the coming decades, Yemen will suffer three negative trends – one economic, one demographic, and one environmental.

Economically, Yemen depends heavily on oil production. Yet analysts predict that its petroleum output, already down from 460,000 barrels a day in 2002 to between 300,000 and 350,000 barrels in 2007 and down 12 percent in 2007 alone, will fall to zero by 2017.1 The government, which receives the vast majority of its revenue from taxes on oil production, has conducted virtually no planning for its post-oil future.

Demographically, Yemen’s population – already the poorest on the Arabian Peninsula with an unemployment rate of 40 percent – is expected to double by 2035. An incredible 45 percent of Yemen’s population is under the age of 15.2

Environmentally, this large population will soon exhaust Yemen’s ground water resources. Given that a full 90 percent of Yemen’s water is used in highly inefficient agricultural projects, this trend portends disaster. This confluence of political, ideological, economic, and environmental forces will render Yemen a fertile ground for the training and recruitment of Islamist militant groups for the foreseeable future.

The brief paints a grim picture of Yemen's problems. It also discusses the presence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and contends that "it will become an increasing threat to the United States and its interests in the Arabian Peninsula." Prescient, considering the events of Christmas Day.

Several options are offered to help Yemen become a stable functioning state, to include engaging the international community and increasing financial, counterterrorism, and technical assistance, among other suggestions.

As pressure on al-Qaeda has increased in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Yemen has become the most likely place for them to regroup.

As we look at just how to adjust to this scenario, the BBC also has a piece worth noting. Jeremy Brown, writing for the BBC, notes that after the Christmas Day terror attempt, al-Qaeda in Yemen looked at the attempt as a success:

In a swaggering and ambitious statement, they claimed that they sent the Nigerian student onto the plane, and that he only failed because of a technical fault with the bomb.

For them, getting that close counts as the next best thing to a successful mission.

The fractured government and the rugged terrain of Yemen's mountains make it an ideal location for al-Qaeda. The attacks on al-Qaeda in December are reported to likely bring new recruits to the group as rhetoric escalates against Americans and the Yemeni government:

Making deals with tribes that have lost large numbers of women and children in government attacks will be very difficult.

Mr Shaea said that al-Qaeda in Yemen believes that American actions will bring it recruits.

"The United States wants to fight al-Qaeda here. It won't work, they'll make this a new Waziristan, exporting fighters all over the world."

A diverse range of observers, in Yemen and abroad, agree that a heavy-handed counter-terrorism strategy will create more problems than it will solve.

Brown also cites the crushing poverty in Yemen as a problem the country faces. His conclusion is that Yemen isn't yet a failed state, but unless something changes, it will continue to descend into chaos.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that Yemeni officials are publicly playing down the role of a partnership with the United States for fear of backlash:

As the United States ramps up its counterterrorism role here, senior Yemeni officials are publicly playing down the partnership, fearing that the government could pay a heavy political price for aligning with the United States and appearing too weak to control al-Qaeda on its own. The head of Yemen's national security agency declared over the weekend that the threat posed by al-Qaeda had been exaggerated and that Yemen is not a haven for militants, the state news agency Saba reported.

This is an interesting conclusion in light of the fact that several embassies were closed over the weekend out of fear of security concerns, not to mention the missing six trucks of weapons and explosives that ignited those fears.

And let's not forget that those being held in the bombing of the USS Cole mysteriously escaped from a Yemeni prison.

At any rate, it's clear that Yemen is likely the next hotbed of focus for our national security leaders. What is alarming, in a way, is that this White House refuses to accept responsibility for any of what has happened over the last couple of weeks. Major Garrett on Twitter quoted Robert Gibbs as saying "the president doesn't feel as if he shares any blame." It was the intelligence services fault.

Is the best strategy for winning the war on terror for Obama to continue to wage war with our own intelligence services?

The Washington Times has even indicated that possibly Obama has been too focused on his heath care issue to focus properly on national security. I'm not sure I'd go that far - I'd like to think a president could focus on more than one issue at a time. Obama has also been criticized for spending too much time playing golf. Bush received the same criticism.

In the end, we need to take a hard line look at Yemen and what is happening there. Janet Napolitano is not exactly filling me with confidence, either. This is not the time for a pantywaist president or an appeasement strategy. The time for bowing and open hands may be coming to a close.

It's time for a strong leader. Do we have one?

Yemen Security Forces "Lose" Six Trucks of Weapons

I'm not exactly sure how security forces lose track of six trucks of weapons and explosives, but they've managed to do just that in Yemen which prompted the closure of several embassies, including ours, yesterday:

The closure of three embassies in Yemen was prompted by local security forces losing track of six trucks full of arms and explosives, say reports from Yemen.

France announced its mission in the capital Sanaa was shut on Monday, a day after the US and UK closed theirs.

It follows threats from an al-Qaeda wing linked to an alleged plot to blow up a transatlantic plane over the US.

******

On Monday, France shut its Yemen embassy, Japan suspended its consular service in Sanaa, and Spain restricted public access to its mission there.

It comes after six trucks full of weapons and explosives entered the capital, and the security forces lost track of the vehicles, according to Yemeni media.

Meanwhile, John Brennan continues to insist we will return terroists to Yemen and at the same time work plea bargains with the Panty-Bomber. If they can't keep up with six weapons loaded trucks, how will they keep up with returned jihadists?

Terrorism Czar Says Yes to Yemen?

John Brennan is the new terrorism czar. (Side question - why do we need a "terrorism czar" when we have a Department of Homeland Security? ....oh....never mind.)

Anyway, Brennan is quoted this morning as saying that yes indeedy some Gitmo graduates will still go to Yemen:

About half of the roughly 200 detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay would be prosecuted in the United States by federal courts or military tribunals. Some would be sent to third countries, including Yemenis returned to their home nation, Brennan said.

Can we all just get on the same page, here?

Team Obama on December 12 says it's okay to send detainees to Yemen: "the government was gaining confidence in Yemen’s willingness to handle returning detainees after months of 'intense' talks under the Obama administration..."

But on January 1 the story is "A senior administration official said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s interagency team had already decided quietly several weeks ago that the security situation in Yemen was too volatile to transfer any more detainees beyond six who were sent home in December. "

Are we or aren't we?

Hello? Is anybody home?


Related Post: John O. Brennan's Philosophy on Iran

Via: Hot Air and Memeorandum

Don't Tell Steve Benen What Joe Lieberman Said Today

Oh good lord, Steve Benen will go apoplectic when he hears this one:

"Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Sunday said that Yemen could be the ground of America's next overseas war if Washington does not take preemptive action to root out al-Qaeda interests there."

Benen says "I told you so!" in 3, 2, 1...

"We should be gravely concerned - to say the least."

At The Weekly Standard, Thomas Joscelyn has some preliminary analysis of yesterday's thwarted terror attack:

Finally, all of this could also further complicate the Obama administration’s attempts to close Guantanamo. Around 90 or more of the remaining 198 detainees are Yemeni. The Bush administration did not repatriate many of them to their home country because of security concerns. The Obama administration has similarly been reluctant to transfer large numbers of detainees because the Yemeni government has an abysmal track record when it comes to keeping tabs on known al Qaeda terrorists.

President Saleh’s regime is also notoriously duplicitous, and works with al Qaeda and like-minded jihadist organizations at times. Thus far, the American government has not wanted to risk transferring or releasing the Gitmo Yemenis to Saleh’s custody because it could easily lead to their rejoining the jihad in short order.

The Yemen part of Mudallad’s story is, therefore, of paramount importance. It is too early to tell how important this aspect is, but we should be gravely concerned - to say the least.

The Obama administration has already released Gitmo graduates to Yemen as recently as last week. I wonder how long before those guys show back up in the terror cycle. Joscelyn is right that it is certainly something we should be concerned about.

Additionally, Mark Steyn at NRO's The Corner has the story of the passenger who was first to react:

Schuringa, sitting in seat 20J, in the right-most section of the Airbus 330, looked to his left. "I saw smoke rising from a seat ... I didn’t hesitate. I just jumped," he said.

Schuringa dove over four passengers to reach Abdul Mutallab’s seat. The suspect had a blanket on his lap. "It was smoking and there were flames coming from beneath his legs."

"I searched on his body parts and he had his pants open. He had something strapped to his legs."

It's reminiscent of Flight 93 and the passengers who thwarted that attempt. Thank goodness for the bravery and the vigilance of Americans who continue to stay alert to the threat of jihad.

And finally, who knew about "suicide underwear"? Good grief. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Lots more at Memeorandum.

Club Gitmo Ships Out Three More

Gitmo is three detainees lighter today with more to pack off for the sunny skies of Palau this week. Jake Tapper has the run down of who shipped out this week here. Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, a native of Yemen, was returned to his home country where he was welcomed "with enthusiasm" and two others have gone to Ireland.

Ali Ahmed says he was never, ever in Afghanistan but the U.S. government says he "was associated with Al-Qaeda. He was present on the front lines in Bagram, Afghanistan. He was identified by a senior Al-Qaeda facilitator as having been a resident at a safehouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2000 (his individual also saw the detainee at a safehouse located in Faisalabad, Pakistan in February 2002 with a group of Yemenis who had fled Afghanistan). Finally, the Detainee was identified by another individual, a senior Al-Qaeda operational planner, as having resided at a safehouse located in Kandahar in 2001."

Al Ahmed's statement is here. He claims he was in Pakistan the whole time smoking hashish and hanging out with a bunch of university students while trying to gain Pakistani citizenship and looking for work.

As for the other two, Team Obama didn't name them at the request of the Irish government but Tapper reports that "Amnesty International has been lobbying Ireland to accept Uzbek national Oybek Jamoldinivich Jabbarov, and another Uzbekh. " Tapper has their details here.

The New York Times has this list of countries that have accepted detainees - there are about 40 of them; not all of those transfers were under Team Obama, of course.

There are still over 220 in residence at Club Gitmo and Obama is already backpeddling on his January deadline for closure. It's a little harder than he thought and, as reported last week, the Bush administration os partly to blame for that because they left such messy files and kept such poor records.

And so, as Iran builds more nukes and test fires missiles, as Venezuela seeks more uranium, as terror threats are being thwarted all over the United States, do we feel safer now than we did a year ago?

(H/T: Memeorandum)

Not Everyone Goes to Palau or Bermuda...

The Washington Post today is reporting that the Obama administration has all but given up on bringing Gitmo terrorists into the United States except for trial. With the settlement yesterday of four Uighurs in Bermuda and with the other thirteen likely going to Palau, he has lightened his burden at Gitmo by 17. Call it 18 when you count the detainee brought to Manhatten for trial this week.

Of course, the British remain angry about the Bermuda deal, but no worries, Hillary has now talked to them to alleviate their fears. No word yet on how that went.

The Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday that the administration is now nearing a deal with Saudi Arabia to take many of the 100 Yemeni detainees who remain at Gitmo. Supposedly the Yemenis would enter one of the Saudi rehabilitation programs. Yemen has asked the U.S. for financial assistance to establish a rehabilitation program similar to that of the Saudi's but so far, the U.S. has resisted that option.

"Yemen's President Saleh has been seeking U.S. financial assistance for Sana'a to establish its own rehabilitation program for many of its detainees held in Guantanamo. Yemeni officials said the program includes religious education, vocational training and family reunification. The program is partly modeled on the system Saudi Arabia has developed to reform al Qaeda and other Islamic militants initially detained at Guantanamo or captured inside the Arab kingdom.U.S. officials have questioned Yemen's ability to finance and oversee such a program."

The recidivism rate from Yemeni programs has been horrible.

Yet the the terrorists are supposedly going to Saudi Arabia, not Yemen, should this deal be met. Yemen and Saudi Arabia are closely linked and it's unclear what, if any, guarantees would be in place to assure that these terrorists are not released early, or escape, as is their program record, to re-enter the world of jihad.

Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program is, of course, no guarantee that these Yemenis will go straight. Eleven former Gitmo detainees who went through the program are now currently on "most-wanted" watch lists. Yemen is a huge terrorist recruiting playground - and again, what are our guarantees that these guys won't end up right back there?

The Weekly Standard, in a February 2009 article, pointed to three Yemini detainees who are "typical" of the Gitmo Yemeni population.

Abdul Rahman Umir al Qyati answered the call for jihad in Afghanistan. He trained at al Qaeda's infamous al Farouq camp and then became a guard at the Kandahar airport in 2001. At that time, the airport was a stronghold for Osama bin Laden, and only the most trustworthy recruits were given guard duties there. Al Qyati "holds the United States in disdain" and admits "that if another call for jihad were issued he would comply even if it meant killing Americans and destroying U.S. interests."

Majid Abdu Ahmed also answered a Yemeni cleric's call for jihad in Afghanistan. During his time in U.S. detention, Ahmed referred to his interviewing agents as "infidels" and explained "that all Americans are infidels, and they will go to hell." Ahmed told his interviewers that the September 11 attacks "were very small in scale and he wishes for greater destruction and torture to fall upon Americans."

Adil Said al Haj Obeid al Busayss is an admitted Taliban member who attended a training camp in late 2000 and then fought on the front lines in Afghanistan. Busayss sees the entire world as a battlefield for jihadist forces to conquer. When a non-Islamic country falls, its inhabitants will have three choices: pay a tax for their infidel beliefs, leave the country, or convert to radical Islam. Anyone who refuses to submit will be killed.

Yet the Saudi rehabilitation program is supposedly fairly effective. Not perfect, but effective.

According to Time, "The Pentagon says it will not change its policy on repatriating Gitmo detainees to Saudi Arabia. 'There are never any absolute guarantees,' said Navy spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon. "There's an inherent risk in all detainee transfers and releases from Guantánamo.'" My question is, why take the risk?

One of the spokesmen for the Saudi program, "claims the program's success stemmed from its guiding principle that jihadis are victims, rather than villains. " Seriously? They are victims? Tell that to the families of 9/11 or the USS Cole.

60 Minutes recently did a program on the Saudi rehabilitation program; as expected it was very favorable. They also addressed the recidivism rate, pointing out that "11 of 117 men returned from Guantanamo have shown up again on Saudi Arabia's list of most wanted terrorists. You can call that a 10% failure rate or you can call that a 90% success rate...Mohammed Al Awfi became a colossal embarrassment to the soft approach. Awfi came back from six years in Guantanamo in a back brace, went through rehabilitation, but then traded the back brace for a bandoleer, and along with another graduate of the program, showed up in Yemen on an Al Qaeda video denouncing the Saudi government."

What I'm wondering at this point is not so much how successful the program in Saudi Arabia is, but what kind of deal Obama has had to make with them to get them to take the Yemenis. Are the Saudi's so anxious to take them? Why would that be? What kind of sweetener are we adding to the deal? If we're giving Palau $200 million, what are we offering Saudi Arabia? Is throwing Israel under the bus part of the deal? Just askin'.

The only "absolute guarantee" I can see to keep these guys from returning to terrorism would be continued detention at Gitmo which even Eric Holder called "a model prison."

(Image credit: Hassan Ammar / AFP / Getty)