Ali Musa Daqduq | Right Wing Granny

The Muslim culture is a very male-oriented culture where power is respected and weakness is not. I am not sure that our State Department and the Obama Administration are taking that into consideration in some of their recent actions.

Reuters reported yesterday that the Obama Administration is considering transferring a senior Taliban official now at Guantanamo over to Afghan custody. Haven’t we learned from our mistakes? In Iraq (see rightwinggranny.com) Ali Musa Daqduq, a Hezbollah operative involved in the planning of the kidnapping and murder of American soldiers in Karbala in 2007, who is also guilty of arming and training Iraqi insurgents, was turned over to the Iraqis as the Americans withdrew (rather than taken to Guantanamo) and is expected to be released to either Beirut or Tehran.

The Reuters story reports:

One U.S. intelligence official said there had been intense bipartisan opposition in Congress to the proposed transfer.

“I can tell you that the hair on the back of my neck went up when they walked in with this a month ago, and there’s been very, very strong letters fired off to the administration,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The senior administration official confirmed that the White House has received letters from lawmakers on the issue. “We will not characterize classified Congressional correspondence, but what is clear is the President’s order to us to continue to discuss these important matters with Congress,” the official said.

Even supporters of a controversial deal with the Taliban – a fundamentalist group that refers to Americans as infidels and which is still killing U.S., NATO and Afghan soldiers on the battlefield – say the odds of striking an accord are slim.

Critics of Obama’s peace initiative remain deeply skeptical of the Taliban’s willingness to negotiate, given that the West’s intent to pull out most troops after 2014 could give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or push the weak Kabul government toward collapse.

President Obama refuses to send anyone to Guantanamo. Unfortunately that refusal is putting Americans and our national security at risk.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal (no link–subscribers only) has an editorial entitled, “The Daqduq Disgrace.” It deals with terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq, a Hezbollah operative involved in the planning of the kidnapping and murder of American soldiers in Karbala in 2007, who is also guilty of arming and training Iraqi insurgents. Daqduq is in Iraqi custody. It is expected that Daqduq will be released.

The article reports:

The Administration contends that its hands were tied by the U. S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, which required Iraq’s consent–not forthcoming–to remove any prisoners from the country. But it’s hard to see why that stipulation would apply to Daqduq, who is not an Iraqi citizen (he is a Lebanese national).

The Administration considered bringing Daqduq to the U.S. for trial in federal court or a military tribunal (showing that the status-of-forces deal was not insurmountable).

The article in the Wall Street Journal points out that the place for Daqduq to go was Guantanamo. Unfortunately, although the Obama Administration has not been successful in its attempts to close Guantanamo, it has refused to send anyone there.

Daqduq will receive a hero’s welcome in either Beirut or Tehran. It is a shame that politics have prevented us from locking up someone who will probably do harm to America in the future.

Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

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