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November 14, 2005

US Arrested, And Released, Iraqi With Same Name As Amman Bomber

Not confirmed yet if it's the same guy, though:

.S. forces detained and later released an Iraqi with a name that matched one of three suicide bombers who struck Amman hotels, killing 57 others, the U.S. military said Monday.
Jordanian authorities said Safaa Mohammed Ali, 23, was part of the al-Qaida in Iraq squad that bombed the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAD and Day's Inn hotels on Wednesday.

In Baghdad, the U.S. command said a man by that name was detained by U.S. forces in November 2004 during the American assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The Americans said they did not know if the man they detained was the same Safaa Mohammed Ali identified by the Jordanians as one of the bombers.

"He was detained locally at the division detention facility" but was released two weeks later because there was no "compelling evidence to continue to hold him" as a "threat to the security of Iraq."

The U.S. detention of thousands of Iraqis has been cited especially by members of the Sunni Muslim minority that fuels the insurgency as a major motivation for the continuing campaign of violence.

Yes, by all means, let's release all of these guys if we cannot, in the midst of a war, prove their crimes or continuing danger before a federal jury.

I mean, that's what we did in WWII, right? After we'd captured tens of thousands of German troops, we let them go a few weeks later, because we could not prove them guilty of crimes and we could also not prove they'd immediately reconstitute with the Wehrmacht after release.

And here come the conspiracy theories. just when Bush has his lowest approval rate of his service, and shortly after the 12 months of Fitzmas, a man we "detained" and then "released for want of evidence" "just so happens" to show up in Amman and "blow up a wedding."

Just as Bush is claiming that "terrorists" intend to kill us, Europeans, Jews, and not-sufficiently-Islamist Muslims, this "surprise attack" comes to suggest that he's "right." * I question the timing.

* Overuse of scare quotes designed to emulate the paranoid schizophrenic school of political discourse.

posted by Ace at 02:59 PM

Comments

Here's a link to a link that has more of this... including an incident in which a US soldier was shot and wounded by a terrorist that had been captured and released for 'lack of evidence'...

Posted by: steve sturm on November 14, 2005 03:03 PM

"Japproval"? Is that related to the World War II analogy?

;-)

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 14, 2005 04:37 PM

pfff. Safaa Mohammed Ali was my cab driver yesterday. And makes a mean kabob. And runs the bodega...

I was hoping they'd say he was in Abu Ghraib. At least then I could feel confident that Private Lindsay laughed at his wiener.

Posted by: SomeJoe on November 14, 2005 06:40 PM

Hi, "Ace"!

Posted by: on November 14, 2005 06:59 PM

This is a silly post. The only way to be sure you will never release a bad guy is to never release anyone you detain which is not practical.

Posted by: James B. Shearer on November 14, 2005 08:34 PM

The only way to be sure you will never release a bad guy is to never release anyone you detain...

But there's a wide gulf between our current policy and surety.

Posted by: geoff on November 14, 2005 08:45 PM

geoff, our current policy has nothing to do with requiring proof to a federal jury or any other level of due process. I suspect detainees are released more or less at random when we run out of space. It is at least arguable that requiring some degree of proof to hold people would improve matters. What do you think we should be doing differently?

Posted by: James B. Shearer on November 14, 2005 11:11 PM

I suspect detainees are released more or less at random when we run out of space.

That was not my understanding. The Abu Ghraib scandal forced the US to accelerate prisoner releases, rather than detaining them indefinitely as POWs. This policy, while hopefully more just, has the side effects mentioned above. The question is: is a Type I error (letting a terrorist go) sufficiently bad that we should allow more Type II errors (mistakenly detaining innocents)?

But the point here is that the policies espoused by the liberal critics have had the obvious consequences for which those same critics will never take responsibility.

Posted by: geoff on November 14, 2005 11:42 PM

geoff, liberals are not running our detention facilities in Iraq. If detainees are being released inappropriately it is not their fault. People were released from Abu Ghraib because it was overcrowded and understaffed. You can't keep adding prisoners and never let anyone out. If you think we need more prisons perhaps you should say so.

Posted by: James B. Shearer on November 15, 2005 12:17 AM

geoff, liberals are not running our detention facilities in Iraq.

Nor are they running the facility at Guantanamo. But pressure from the left has forced the release of several prisoners, some of whom were later captured in Afghanistan after they rejoined the Taliban.

If you think we need more prisons perhaps you should say so.

We are already expanding the prison facilities and adding a fourth prison, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future the prisons will be handed over to the Iraqis.

You can't keep adding prisoners and never let anyone out.

Well, yeah, that's what you do with POWs. We have the unusual situation that we can't exactly tell if the detainees deserve to be POWs, since the combatants don't have uniforms, but other than that, yes, we keep them until the fighting's done.

That said, I'll admit that there's at least as much pressure from the Iraqis themselves as there is from the liberal faction at home.

Posted by: geoff on November 15, 2005 12:42 AM

Michael Yon has described how frustrated the US troops are with the Iraqi judicial system which has truly become westernized in it's adaptation of the 'Catch and Release of Dangerous Criminals' program.

Posted by: Ring on November 16, 2005 03:25 PM

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Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
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A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.