Terrorist released from Gitmo becomes suicide bomber in Iraq

[Little-Acorn]

Score one for the people who want to close Guantanamo Bay prison for captured terrorists. They managed to rack up some civilians and/or American and Iraqi troops. And now they can bash the Bush Administration for even more deaths, as a side benefit!

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http://opinionjournal.com

from "Best of the Web"
by James Taranto

From Detainee to Detonatee

"A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday," Reuters reports from Dubai:

A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem told the Dubai-based television channel.

"We were shocked by the painful news we received this afternoon . . . through a call from one of the friend's of martyr Abdullah in Iraq," said Salem al-Ajmi in a telephone interview aired by Arabiya.

He did not say when the suicide bombing happened.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, blogger and law professor Jonathan Adler makes a manful effort at evenhandedness:

What does this prove? Nothing really, but I'm sure partisans in the debate over Guantanamo and the treatment and detention of alleged [sic] enemy combatants will see this as evidence that confirms their respective points of view. On the one hand, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi may have been a dangerous enemy combatant all along, and should never have been released. On the other hand, he may have been wrongfully detained in the first place, only to become radicalized by his (mis)treatment by the U.S. military. In other words, we either had a terrorist and let him go, or we created one.

If Adler is right, though, he has focused on a trivial difference between the two sides of the debate while ignoring both an important point of agreement and the truly crucial area of contention.

According to Adler, both sides agree that the detainees at Guantanamo are terrorists, differing only over how they became terrorists. The real distinction is that one side (the side this column is on, in case it's not clear) favors keeping the terrorists at Guantanamo so as to prevent terrorism, whereas the other side wants to release the terrorists so that they can murder more Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.

[mundame]

The real distinction is that one side (the side this column is on, in case it's not clear) favors keeping the terrorists at Guantanamo so as to prevent terrorism, whereas the other side wants to release the terrorists so that they can murder more Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.

Why does it matter if they kill Muslims? I'm not clear about that. I'm real clear that they had better not kill Americans, but if they run around wherever they came from killing people, isn't that an in-house criminal matter that belongs to those countries?

I don't think it's our responsibility to keep criminals of the world locked up at our expense; state after state is letting loose our own criminals because they can't afford to imprison them, I read today. So I don't see why we have to put up Egyptian and Iraqi and who knows where criminals too.

[glockmail]

We should just shoot them all.

[midcan5]

James Taranto makes me throw up, a more bigoted person I cannot imagine. His idiotic criticisms of Kerry for looking French were about as dumb as journalism could get.

America is a land of law, it is in the courtroom of justice that a person should be tried. We are fond of saying innocent until ... until fear clouds our eyes.

[glockmail]

So terrorism should be a police action, and the terrorists given Constitutional rights?

[Abbey Marie]

A terrorist released from Gitmo commits more terrorism, and still there is doubt in some people's mind about the need for Gitmo? The spin is enough to make you dizzy.