BF2S Forums Report: 74 released Gitmo detainees are terrorists again

.Sup wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if they became terrorists after they were tortured in Gitmo. I'd grow hate towards the torturers too

FrankJ wrote:

Cheney’s waterboarding terrorists created or saved thousands of Americans.

Last edited by nickb64 (2009-06-09 15:07:04)

PureFodder wrote:

FEOS wrote:

PureFodder wrote:

Do you believe that anyone who is captured and taken to Gitmo must be a terrorist or do you think that it is logically possible for people to end up in Gitmo despite not actually being a terrorist?

The headline makes the assumption that they were in fact terrorists when they were captured despite the clear possibity that they were innocent and only began to get involved in terrorism afterwards. You can only return to terrorism if you were previously a terrorist, which is something that the authors don't know.

First, not just every swinging Richard gets sent to Gitmo. There is a lot more than just "being captured" to determine who goes to Gitmo and who goes to prisons in-country.

Is it possible? Of course. Anything is possible.

Is it probable? No.

You people are acting like these guys were found caring for new-born puppies or something. With no intel to back up who they are or what they do. They were just butterfly-farming, minding their own business, and WHAM! Uncle Sam comes in and takes them from their idyllic lives and starts to torture them in Cuba. That is utterly asinine and naive.

So you do in fact agree with me that the headline is wrong.

Also, they were arrested as enemy combatants. You can be an enemy combatant and not be a terrorist and you can be a terrorist and not be an enemy combatant. Being an enemy combatant and directing your actions against only military targets does not make you a terrorist, so even if they were detained as enemy combatants, there's still a burden of proof required to show that they comitted terrorism, which is what the article accuses them of being prior to ending up in Gitmo.

Those phrases accepted a premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention. Because that premise remains unproved, the day the article appeared in the newspaper, editors changed the headline and the first paragraph on the Times Web site to refer to prisoners the report said had engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.

The article and headline also conflated two categories of former prisoners. In the Pentagon report, 27 former Guantánamo prisoners were described as having been confirmed as engaging in terrorism, with another 47 suspected of doing so without substantiation. The article should have distinguished between the two categories, to say that about one in 20 of former Guantánamo prisoners described in the Pentagon report were now said to be engaging in terrorism. (The larger share — about one in seven —applies to the total number described in the report as confirmed or suspected of engaging in terrorism.)

Harmor wrote:

Released Gitmo prisoner now leads Taliban forces against U.S. troops

New York Post wrote:

As Marine Corps forces roll into southern Afghanistan, they face a familiar enemy - Mullah Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who now leads a reconstituted Taliban ...

Whoopsie.

M.O.A.B wrote:

Now I'd see that with a bit more credibility if he was just one of their ranks, not a leader. I'm doubting you get into a position of a leader that easily from having no experience fighting coalition troops.

"Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is from Helmand Province and has taken a circuitous route to become head of the radical Islamic group.

Zakir was a senior fighter during the Taliban regime in the 1990s."

He was already part of them before he was captured and detained.