The terrorist release that has garnered headlines is Scotland's release of the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. On his return home, al-Megrahi was fêted as a hero by Libya's President Moammar Gadhafi.
Such merriment is a sad capstone to events unleashed on December 21, 1988, when the flight, full of 259 unsuspecting people from 21 nations, was blown from the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland. We have no ability to assess what dreams died that day. The families of these innocent victims have the right to be outraged.
We also heard outrage from Washington, but we cannot help but feel it is feigned anger. Our assessment after a careful review of Obama administration policy, forces us to conclude that it virtually guarantees future Lockerbie, 9/11 and Khobar towers-type terrorist attacks.
As early as the day after his inaugural celebration, Barack Obama signed a presidential directive ordering the closing of the Guantanamo detention center. Congress rebelled and refused to fund the closing, but the policy impasse is still unresolved. The question of where Obama plans to house terrorists in the USA is an ongoing debate, but the presidential directive to close Guantanamo by 2010 still stands.
The pace of terrorist releases has also quickened under the Obama administration.
Obama released Binyam Mohamed from Guantanamo in February of 2009 where he had been detained since 2004. He was arrested in Pakistan at the Karachi airport in April 2002 for using a false passport in an attempt to travel to the UK. He admitted to training at the Al Farouq terrorist training camp. He was believed by counter terrorism experts to be a conspirator in the Jose Padilla plot to explode a radioactive dirty bomb in the United States.
The U.S. military released a senior Shiite terrorist with close ties to Iran in early June 2009. The terrorist, Laith al-Khazali, is a member of the terror group Asa'ib al-Haq. According to reports in The New York Times, he "played a leading role in a group that killed five American soldiers in Karbala in a sophisticated attack in 2007".
Continued... |