Wus' Up?

President Obama ordered the detention facility at Guantanamo closed within a year. Prior to the announcement a terrorist known as Said Ali al-Shihri who was released after spending six years inside the U.S. prison camp and is now the number 2 of Yemen's al-Qaeda branch according to a purported internet terror network statement. Although al-Shiri was released in Nov. 2007 and transferred to his homeland, he ended up in Yemen and is now reported to be working for al-Qaeda again.

His case highlights the complexity of Obama's decision to shut down the detention center; most likely commuting some of the detainee's sentences. The Pentagon also reported that many ex-detainees are returning to fight against the U.S. after their release.

On Feb. 5, Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trails at Gitmo, upheld Obama's Jan. 22 executive order to halt terrorist court proceedings at the detention base in Cuba. The charges against the two detainees, suspected bombers of the U.S.S. Cole have been dropped by a senior Pentagon judge, angering the family members of the seventeen sailors who died on the Cole on Oct. 12, 2000.

Can you see a pattern developing here? The families have been waiting eight years for justice. Here's the real joke; part of the reasoning for some of their releases is "they haven't read their Miranda rights." "Hello" was any of our captured military "read their rights" before they were executed by the terrorists?

Meanwhile, the politicians with federal prisons in their states are fighting not to have some of the terrorist detainees re-incarcerated or moved into their back yard; it's called the NIMBY problem (not in my back yard) group. Wus' up?

God bless America

Richard Snyder
Avon Park