More Troops to Afghanistan

With the news that 17,000 more troops are being sent to Afghanistan, President Obama faces his first real foreign policy dilemma. That dilemma being, that the war therein will most likely get worse before it gets better. We will need to put a large effort there so as to avoid a loss. The Democratic Party, most likely won't be happy about it, and there's always been something I've wondered about. That being, that Democrats and assorted liberals railed against the Iraq war and the casualties incurred therein, but are they willing to accept such casualties in Afghanistan, the war Iraq was a distraction from?

President Obama's first test in foreign policy will be, will he able to stand up to the pressure that will inevitably come and stick it out for the greater good.

The Guatanamo Bay All-Stars

While watching Hannity a couple weeks ago I got the idea to discuss exactly which high-value al-Qaeda are at Gitmo. Here they are:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, although he lived in Kuwait rather than Afghanistan, heading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from sometime around 1999. According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks". He is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 by the Pakistani ISI, possibly in a joint action with agents of the American Diplomatic Security Service, and has been in U.S. custody since that time. In September 2006, the U.S. government announced it had moved Mohammed from a secret prison to the facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Human Rights Watch and he himself have claimed that the American authorities have tortured him, a claim that was admitted to be accurate on February 4, 2008, when it was revealed that he was subjected to the controversial technique of "simulated drowning", also called "waterboarding".
In March 2007, after four years in captivity, including six months of detention at Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — as it was claimed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing in Guantanamo Bay — confessed to masterminding the September 11th attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and various foiled attacks.
On December 8, 2008, Mohammed and four co-defendants sent a note to the military judge expressing their desire to confess and plead guilty.

Hambali
Hambali (Indonesian). He attended a key planning meeting for the 9/11 attacks in Malaysia (see January 5-8, 2000) and is accused of involvement in many other plots, including the 2002 Bali bombings (see October 12, 2002). Riduan Isamuddin also transliterated as Riduan Isamudin, Riduan Isomuddin, and Riduan Isomudin, better known by the nom de guerre Hambali, born as Encep Nurjaman, born April 4, 1966 (Indonesia) is the former military leader of the Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is linked with Al Qaeda. He is now in extrajudicial detention in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
Hambali was often described as "the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia. Some media reports describe him as Bin Laden's lieutenant for Southeast Asian operations. Other reports describe him as an independent peer. He was highly trusted by Al Qaeda and was the main link between the two organisations. Hambali was a close friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who planned Operation Bojinka and the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. Hambali envisioned creating a Muslim state, in the form of an Islamic superpower (a theocracy) across Southeast Asia, with himself as its leader (Caliph). His ambition was to rule Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, and parts of the Philippines, Myanmar, and Thailand.
Receiving increasing attention in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, in which 202 people died, he was eventually apprehended in a joint operation by the CIA and Thai police. He is currently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, after three years of CIA custody in a secret location.








Ahmed Khalfan Ghaliani









Ghalfani is a member of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. He was indicte in the United States as a participant in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. He was on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list from its inception in October of 2001. In 2004, he was captured and detained by Pakistani forces in a joint operation with the United States. Ghailani is currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp; he is one of the 14 people who had previously been held at secre locations abroad.






Ramzi Binalshibh









Ramzi Binalshibh born May 1, 1972, is, according to the United States, Germany, and several other countries, a key al-Qaeda member who helped in planning the September 11 attacks. A citizen of Yemen, Binalshibh was the first to be publicly identified as the "20th hijacker," of whom there were several individuals thought to have consecutively been tasked to fill out the single missing slot among the four terrorist teams. Binalshibh was captured in Pakistan on September 11, 2002, after a gun battle in Karachi with the Pakistani ISI and the CIA's Special Activities Division. On September 14, 2002 he was subsequently turned over to the United States, which transferred him to an undisclosed location for interrogation. His profile was removed from the FBI Seeking Information wanted list by October 17, 2002.
Binalshibh remained a prisoner of the U.S., at an undisclosed CIA-led location, until September 2006. On September 6, 2006 U.S. President George W. Bush announced that Binalshibh and other CIA held prisoners had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.




Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri









Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is one of the aliases of the Saudi al-Qaeda member Abdul-Rahim Hussein Muhammad 'Abdul. He is alleged to be the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing and other terrorist attacks, who headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November of 2002.
On February 6, 2008, the CIA director General Michael Hayden confirmed that the CIA had used waterboarding on al-Nashiri, along with two other prisoners, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubayda. In December 2008, he was charged before a Guantanamo Military Commission. The charges were dropped in February 2009 pending the Obama administration's review of all Guantánamo detentions, but may be refiled. In November 2002, al-Nashiri was captured in the United Arab Emirates. He is currently in American military custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, having previously been held at some secret location. On September 29, 2004, he was sentenced to death in absentia in a Yemeni court for his role in the USS Cole bombing.
The U.S. military put al-Rahim al-Nashiri in prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said March 14, 2008. He was held by the CIA for an undisclosed amount of time.

Abu Faraj al-Libbi

Abu Faraj al-Libi is an assumed name or nom de guerre of a Libyan alleged to be a senior member of the al-Qaeda terror organization. His real name is thought to be Mustafa al-'Uzayti. He was arrested by Pakistan's ISI on May 2, 2005, in Mardan (30 miles north of Peshawar). Finding al-Libi was a joint effort of the United States and Pakistan. He is now in American military custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, having previously been held at some secret location.
In approximately 2000, he was living in the Karte Parwan district of Kabul, Afghanistan.
In August 2004 Pakistani officials stated that al-Libbi (also known as Abu Faraj Farj) had become "number three" in al-Qaeda as "director of operations", a rôle once filled by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Upon al-Libbi's arrest U.S. and Pakistani authorities continued to claim him as the third most important figure in al-Qaeda.
According to the BBC and VOA reports, he was riding pillion on a motorbike when he and his driver were ambushed by Pakistani agents, some of whom were wearing burqas. A VOA reporter from Mardan said that while being apprehended, al-Libbi tried to destroy a notebook, which U.S. officials are now trying to decode. The events leading up to the ambush began with US agents intercepting a mobile phone call made by al-Libbi. They zeroed in his location to a busy road a quarter of a mile away on the outskirts of Mardan, about 75 miles northwest of Islamabad, and tipped-off Pakistani authorities. Plainclothes Pakistani agents arrived in Mardan and hung out, waiting for him to arrive.
Abi Faraj al-Libbi was named by Pakistani authorities as the main planner of the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot. He is also a suspect in two assassination attempts against Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraff. According to the New York Times, "Mr. Libbi's suspected accomplice in those attacks was a well-known Pakistani militant named Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who was also implicated in the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in February 2002. Mr. Farooqi was killed last September in a shootout with security forces in southern Pakistan. The importance of al-Libi in the ranks of Al-Qaeda and Taliban can also be judged from the fact that as soon his story of arrest was aired on VOA, the correspondent received death-threats from the local Taliban network in Mardan which was so far running underground.

Abu Zubayda

Based on al-Libi’s tip, al Qaeda’s one-time operations chief, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in March 2002 in Pakistan. According to the U.S. National Director of Intelligence’s (NDI) biographies of 14 key terrorists at Guantanamo, Zubaydah supervised Afghanistan’s “Khaldan group” of guesthouses and terror-training camps between 1995 and 2000. He assisted Ahmad Ressam, the al Qaeda militant whom vigilant Customs Inspector Diana Dean apprehended on December 14, 1999 at Port Angeles, Washington, as he tried to enter America from British Columbia, Canada. Ressam’s spare-tire compartment contained 135 pounds of explosives he planned to detonate at Los Angeles International Airport as the new millennium arrived. Some of the $50,000 that Zubaydah collected from Saudi donors to assault Israel may have helped finance the September 11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people.While Zubaydah reportedly kept his mouth shut at first, he became much more loquacious once interrogators stuck him in a cold room and cranked up the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Evidently not a fan, Zubaydah sang anyway, although a different song altogether. Zubaydah identified Omar al-Faruq, Rahim al-Nashiri, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as other terrorists.