Al-Qaeda turning prisons into “terrorist academies”
posted at 4:36 am on April 8, 2007 by see-dubya
Prison’s never pleasant. But imagine being cooped up with Al-Qaeda killers and Mahdi Army thugs. That’s Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport:
Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry’s official for prisons, said: “It looks like a terrorist academy. There’s a huge number of these ‘students’; they study how they can kill. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care. The Americans have no solution to this problem.”
And of course I’ve no solution this problem, and it is a problem. We need to detain the bad guys and get them off the streets of Iraq. We can’t put everybody in solitary, we can’t shoot them, and we can’t let them go. Any meaningful reform or change in policy will either be attacked in the helpful, troops-supporting press as the imposition of a Sadistic New Regime of Fascist Torture, or an Attempt To Whitewash Our Sadistic Old Regime of Fascist Torture.
But it’s just not acceptable to go to war to eliminate terrorist training camps in Iraq, only to have one spring up right under our own nose.
Blowback
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Stop taking prisoners?
Theworldisnotenough on April 8, 2007 at 4:51 AM
Aren’t there a lot of chlorine trucks exploding in Baghdad these days?
Stephen M on April 8, 2007 at 4:59 AM
What an interesting topic that has been on my mind all day. Yesterday and today, during FNC headlines and on AP wires, I’ve heard about raids where 3 or so were killed while dozens were captured and thought “Well what good is that? Eventually these guys will get out, and there is no such thing as reforming them”.
Am I being stupid? Do others believe they can be reformed? Of course this isn’t how “we” fight, and until we’re nuked we’ll never fully “get it”, but we need to end these people, not take them as prisoners so that they can simply live to fight another day. We should have learned this lesson by now (in fact I’m sure those on the ground know that we have), but we simply don’t have the political will to fight a war anymore.
This is also my concern with all the toddler terrorist training we see thanks to clips provided by MEMRI tv… How can you ever counter that? I mean, we can’t go out bombing children deliberately… but no one likes to acknowledge (even here) that Islam is the problem… Not “radical” Islam, or a “fringe” group… It’s f-ing Islam folks. I don’t know what the solution is, but I think we’re being foolish to think we can win the hearts and minds of millions of chilren being brainwashed in to hating us. Hmmmm let’s see will they go with what their parents tell them, or the white westerners? But Randy, we have to get their parents out of the picture first! Oh, yeah… then they’re really be more sympathetic to our side.
I don’t know the solution, but just articulating a problem people rarely recognize the vastness of.
RightWinged on April 8, 2007 at 5:03 AM
I would put forth the notion that they were already insurgents when they went into that prison and that is why they are there.
crosspatch on April 8, 2007 at 5:06 AM
There is, I suppose, a way we could try to deal with it. Take these guys and put them in work gangs. You mix them up with people from other regions … make work teams of 10 or 15 guys each one from a different city/tribe/clan … with no regard for religious sect and put them to work in an area that none of them are from building a road or a pipeline or electric lines or sewage plant or whatever. You have to break them up to prevent various hierarchies from their home area coming into play.
crosspatch on April 8, 2007 at 5:10 AM
Just finished a blog thought on: the closest urban combat footage of Iraq you’ll probably ever see, and thoughts about its larger context and meaning.
wordwarp on April 8, 2007 at 5:38 AM
awesome video
crosspatch on April 8, 2007 at 5:58 AM
We can keep them locked up until they are old and grey and having to wear depends sucide belts
William Amos on April 8, 2007 at 6:39 AM
Move the prison to the deep desert.
Zorro on April 8, 2007 at 7:02 AM
We can’t? Why?
csdeven on April 8, 2007 at 8:51 AM
how about a program similar to what we did with German POW’s during WW2? Where we taught them about how to build a new Germany – with democracy. When the war ended we didn’t send the POW’s back right away, we educated some of them to become leaders in the new Germany.
Of course the situation is slightly different. But why can’t we be doing this? Not with the hardcore guys (like KSM) but with individuals who have the potential for leadership.
hotdax on April 8, 2007 at 8:56 AM
That’s a good idea. Here’s a nice twist. Try the terrorist. Convict the terrorist. Sentence the terrorist. Give the family of the terrorists victim all the guns and ammunition they want. Release the terrorist and tell him he has to get to said desert prison on his own. IF the family of his victims EVER find the terrorist outside of the prison, he can be summarily shot on the spot. No trial, no nothing.
csdeven on April 8, 2007 at 9:06 AM
For the ‘non-violent’, Keep them confined for 50 years. After that, it doesn’t matter any more.
Those who are violent, hang’m.
Anyone who deliberately targets unsuspecting, unarmed civilians has committed a ‘war crime’, a ‘crime against humanity’. Under the Geneva convention, we can hang’m, shoot’m , or fry’m, drown’m, gas’m. Perfectly legal, recognized by every government on the planet.
Gangsta thugs who commit murder should be hung, publicly, for several days, until odorous. The protesters, and sympathizers can be hung along side’m, for aiding and abetting.
rockhauler on April 8, 2007 at 10:43 AM
Why is this situation so hard to solve? It seems very easy to me: solatary confinement for all prisioners. No interaction with other prisones under these circumstancs.
Train and motivate a large group of dangerous terrorists determined to destroy you and and your allies, or provide expense to put them in solatary confinement. The conditions do not have to be elaborate, just effective. For that matter put them in a tent surrounded by constatine wire and provide them with food and water.
What am I missing here?
omegaram on April 8, 2007 at 11:36 AM
The International Red Cross, the MSM, the Democrats, every “Peace” origination in the world, The MSM (they think they are important and deserve double billing), the Democrats (same as the MSM), the UN, and anyone else who demonizes the US and the Bush administration.
All of the above would go crazy over such a proposal and would NEVER allow it. It would be Guantanamo Mania 2.0.
RedinBlueCounty on April 8, 2007 at 12:26 PM
There is always something to be said for KILLING the enemy.
Huh.
There’s a concept.
Replace Huns and Nazis with terrorists and insurgents and you’ll get the general idea. THAT’s how you win a war.
Redhead Infidel on April 8, 2007 at 12:55 PM
Mookie says… “http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264814,00.html
CliffHanger on April 8, 2007 at 1:58 PM
One more time:
Mookie says… “Happy Easter!”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264814,00.html
CliffHanger on April 8, 2007 at 1:59 PM
Ahhhh, history repeats itself. Once again conservatives are making terrorists. Robert Gates trained Osama. Rumsfeld armed Saddam. And now Bushie has built training facilities to house these guys. You never learn. The reason we keep getting attacked is because you conservatives keep making terrorists. It’s like you all hate America or something.
shackler on April 8, 2007 at 2:04 PM
Yeah, we know. Terrorism is never the fault of terrorists as far as liberals like you are concerned shackler. Gates did this, Rumsfeld did that, America did the other thing, so terrorism is all their fault. This talking point is so old and boring that i’ve lost interest in it already.
forged rite on April 8, 2007 at 2:58 PM
Good point RedinBlueCounty:
The International Red Cross, the MSM, the Democrats, every “Peace” origination in the world, The MSM (they think they are important and deserve double billing), the Democrats (same as the MSM), the UN, and anyone else who demonizes the US and the Bush administration.
All of the above would go crazy over such a proposal and would NEVER allow it. It would be Guantanamo Mania 2.0.
omegaram on April 8, 2007 at 3:10 PM
forged rifle – you can’t actually COMMUNICATE with a crazy person – they don’t grasp reality, so you’re wasting your words.
I know you mean well, but when someone has already inverted reality in their mind, no matter what you say it gets twisted into something that “proves” their fantasy.
Merovign on April 8, 2007 at 7:01 PM
I think a few JDAMs into the camp followed by a “walk-through” execution would solve the entire problem.
Tim Burton on April 8, 2007 at 8:09 PM
Wouldn’t be an issue if we had the balls to actually kill these unreformable terrorists… Sadly it is YOUR side (the left) that neutered and continues to neuter us. Anyway, yeah, you’re right… these terrorists wouldn’t attack had it not been for their sleeping arangements. They were just farmers, right?
RightWinged on April 8, 2007 at 9:34 PM
wordwarp, thanks for the video. Very good.
Regarding prisoners, didn’t the North Koreans instruct their soldiers that if they were ever captured to organize riots and so forth to create enough havok to force troops to be pulled of the front lines to secure the POW camps?
Was one of the first occasions for Americans to deal with people who “don’t obey the rules.”
Expect much of the same only worse from radical prisoners.
None of these men had a crystal ball to discover what those men would be capable of in twenty years down the road, but at the time, real geopolitical concerns demanded some kind of action, but what? Think of the times. The USSR was teetering dangerously over the world, a wobbly giant, on the brink of collapse, with a nuclear pistol held in its hands, trying to hold Afghanistan. For the US to have confronted the USSR directly in AFghanistan would have been total war, as in missles on New York and Moscow, but a proxy could fight and hold the Soviets at bay. Take for example, Saddam, armed against WHO, precisely? That was Iran, wasn’t it? Iran was feeling pretty full of it after humiliating the US with the embassy hostages. An armed Saddam attacked Iran and kept the radical Islamofascist government busy for 9 years. Maybe that’s not how Saddam saw it, but that’s what happened. There’s a good possibility that Iran’s nuclear program would have been a lot further along right now had they been able to focus on it during those nine years, to our, and others’ detriment. Not many people have the imagination to guess what Saddam was capable of, they being made of nicer stuff, so one shouldn’t be so cheeky about blaming people for not being clairvoyant. How many people in the 1980s had an inkling that Osama bin Laden had meglomaniacal plans? Hard calls are made all the time, but no one truly wants a disaster. Throwing off sneering comments about conservatives arming terrorists displays a stunning shallowness and ignorance, or is simply a cynical gamble that everyone else is ignorant and will buy that line.
naliaka on April 8, 2007 at 10:07 PM
Ever notice liberals never accuse us of making more “militants” or “insurgents”?
Buck Turgidson on April 8, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Awesome video wordwarp. Just don’t tell PETA the stray dog @ 5:00 gets hit.
Buck Turgidson on April 8, 2007 at 11:09 PM
True.
False.
False.
Kralizec on April 9, 2007 at 12:55 PM