Terror Trends Bulletin

Ibrahim al-Qosi, shown here in U.S. custody…before Obama released him to become a leader of the global Jihad movement.

by Christopher W. Holton

There is so much disinformation spreading around about the facility housing Jihadist terrorists at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that one hardly knows where to begin.

The most widespread lie is the myth that Guantanamo is a key recruiting tool for the global Jihad movement.

That was NEVER true and it is not true today.

This is a classic example of the “Big Lie,” in which government officials repeat a preposterous lie often enough and loud enough that it eventually becomes taken for granted as truth, first by the corrupt, recalcitrant media, and eventually by the ignorant populous as a whole.

Jihadists recruit based on their successes, not their failures. Guantanamo is not a Jihadi success story.

Examples of the things that Jihadists actually have used to recruit are:

• The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

• The September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

• The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the subsequent rise of the Islamic State.

• Successful attacks, especially IED and sniper attacks, on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Brutal torture and executions of captives by the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and other Jihadist organizations.

• The 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor in Yemen.

• Attacks on transportation facilities in Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

• The Paris terror attacks of 2015.

• The re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, made possible by the withdrawal from the battlefield of NATO and U.S. forces.

All of these themes can be seen in Jihadi videos released over and over by Jihadi groups around the world. What is distinctly absent is any use of Gitmo in Jihadist propaganda videos.

Despite this, as recently as two weeks ago, President Obama called the closing of the Gitmo facility as the key component of his counterterrorism plan.

What this means is that Obama HAS NO COUNTERTERRORISM PLAN. And the reason he has no counterterrorism plan is that his heart is simply not in this fight. His passionless, delayed, plodding response to events in Garland, Chattanooga and San Bernardino make this painfully clear.

Saying that closing Gitmo is counterterrorism strategy is similar to saying that Jihadist terrorism from the Philippines to Scandinavia, and from California to Nigeria is caused by global warming…er…climate change…or whatever they’re calling it du jour.

Perhaps the starkest example, however, of Obama’s outright lies about Guantanamo are those told about Ibrahim al-Qosi.

Ibrahim al-Qosi is a former Guantanamo inmate who was released by Obama in 2012 who has now emerged as a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Obama claimed that only “low-level” terrorists were being released from Gitmo, but al-Qosi is anything but. AQAP is focused on attacking the West and just days ago al-Qosi, who we had in our custody, appeared on a video urging followers to attack the U.S. and France, particularly New York and Paris.

Releasing barbaric savages from Gitmo is a bad idea. Closing Gitmo is a worse idea. Telling lies for years in support of such dubious objectives is outrageous.

More on Ibrahim al-Qosi from Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/31/ibrahim-al-qosi-released-from-guantanamo-emerges-a/?