Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Question 1

Were the 2009 Christmas-Day bomber and the Times-Square bomber last May (and, indeed, the Shoe Bomber in 2002) considered successful by the U.S. intelligence services?

Answer 1

Yes.

Because intelligence utterly failed to detect them and disaster was averted only because their bombs did not explode.

Question 2

What is the relationship of the 2009 Christmas-Day bomber to the U.S. government's "kill list" in Yemen?

Answer 2

The 2009 Christmas-Day bomber had been trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen. One reaction of the Obama Administration was to institute a “kill list” for Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

Question 3

What is the relationship of the 2009 Christmas-Day bomber to President Obama's inability to close the terrorist-detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

Answer 3

As of Christmas Day 2009, more than half the 200 prisoners remaining at Guantanamo Bay were from Yemen.

In its 5/26/2010 decision in Mahmoud Abdah vs. Barack H. Obama, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stated that although the Obama Administration had decided in June 2009 to release the Yemeni prisoners back to Yemen, it reversed its decision on 1/8/2010. The 1/6/2010 transcript of MacNeil-Lehrer (aka The PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer) makes clear that the then-imminent decision not to release any of the Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo was based on the realization from the 2009 Christmas Day bombing attempt how big a threat was posed by Al Qaeda in Yemen and by the more-than-100 Yemeni prisoners still at Guantanamo.

The text of the 5/26/2010 decision in Mahmoud Abdah vs. Barack H. Obama is contained in the first reply to “Bagram vs. Guantanamo & Abu Graib” which is currently one of the Possible Topics for future meetings posted on our bulletin board = http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

The 1/6/2010 transcript of MacNeil-Lehrer (aka The PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer) is contained in the second reply to “Bagram vs. Guantanamo & Abu Graib.”

Question 4

Did the Co-Chairs of the 9-11 Commission (Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton) release a new report on 10 September 2010?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 5

What was the principal reason for the report?

Answer 5

To warn the Nation that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have been recruiting citizens of the U.S. and Western Europe to conduct terrorist acts in their home countries. And to publicize that such agents can travel freely because of their nationality/passports. And that profiling will be ineffectual because such operatives often do not appear to be Middle Eastern in terms of national heritage.

Question 6

The two lawsuits we are studying concern the inclusion on the U.S. government's "kill list" of a person who is an American citizen because his father, a Yemeni citizen, was in the U.S. during his student days on a Fulbright Scholarship when his son was born -- is there any other country in the world that confers citizenship to everyone born within its borders?

Answer 6

No.

Question 7

Who said - "I'll have you arrested if you touch my junk"?

Answer 7

Probably several people including copycats since news stories can’t agree on whether the dependent or independent clause comes first in the quotation.

However all of the objectors were responding to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel when subjected to the new pat-down procedure implemented on or about 11/17/2010 for anyone declining inspection by the new body scanners.

Question 8

What has been the reaction to this famous quotation?

Answer 8

Widespread indignation.

Question 9

Does the reaction make sense?

Answer 9

No.

Obviously, the new procedure is aimed at preventing any more incidents such as the 2009 Christmas-Day bomber hiding explosives in his underwear when he boarded the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Even if someone would be inclined to take her/his chances without the procedure, the 9/11 Commission Co-Chairs have repeatedly pointed out that Al Qaeda constantly studies our procedures and evolves. So if the TSA had failed to implement the new procedures, then bringing down commercial airliners with underwear bombs would have become commonplace.

It’s just one more inconvenience that the American public has to endure to prevent such tragedies from becoming prevalent.

Question 10

As speculated in Suggested Answer No. 10 to last week's Short Quiz, was the acquittal in a New York federal court of an Al Qaeda terrorist on 284 out of 285 criminal charges the result of the judge's retroactive application of President Obama's Executive Order making water boarding and/or sleep deprivation torture?

Answer 10

The speculation in Q&A 10 of the First Short Quiz appears to be erroneous because the Obama Administration did not give the court a chance to consider the issue of what constitutes “torture” as explained below – apparently because the Obama Administration did not want to risk a court opinion that water boarding and the five interrogation methods approved by the European Court of Human Rights were not “torture” since that would have put President Obama’s Executive Order banning them in a very poor light.

The defendant, Ahmed Ghailani, was one of several co-conspirators in the 8/7/1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania which killed 11 people and injured another 85. One reason for so many criminal charges was the number of people who had been killed or wounded in the attack.

The reasons why Ghailani was the first Guantanamo detainee to be put on trial in a U.S. civilian court were (A) the Obama Administration thought that the evidence was overwhelming, and (B) four of Ghailani’s co-conspirators had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the same U.S. District Court in 2001, just prior to 9-11.

On 5/10/2010, Judge Kaplan filed a written opinion denying Ghailani’s motion to dismiss the indictment that was based on an allegation of unspecified “torture” performed on Ghailani himself. It would appear that this unspecified “torture” was probably sleep deprivation (which had been approved by the European Court of Human Rights as noted in the Q&A’s of the First Short Quiz), because the only Al Qaeda prisoners who have been water boarded are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim Nashiri.

The Obama Administration, in opposing the motion, did not take a position on whether the unspecified procedures were “torture” but instead took the position that no evidence would be introduced that had been obtained from Ghailani or from other sources (including testimony from other members of Al Qaeda) that would not have been discovered in the absence of any evidence obtained from Ghailani.

On that basis, Judge Kaplan denied the motion.

Judge Kaplan also filed a written opinion on 7/12/2010 denying Ghailani’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that he had been denied the Constitutional right to a speedy trial even though 12 years had passed since the 8/7/1998 bombing.

The trial got underway this past fall with the U.S. government attempting to parade to the witness stand a number of Al Qaeda operatives who had agreed to testify voluntarily. Among them was the Obama Administration’s star witness, one Hussein Abebe.

Ghailani renewed his objection to the testimony of these witnesses on the grounds that the U.S. government learned of the existence of these witnesses and the knowledge they possessed as the result of unspecified procedures alleged to be “torture” and performed on Ghailani himself.

The Obama Administration, in opposing the objection, once again took no position on whether the unspecified procedures performed on Ghailani were “torture” but instead took the position that the existence of these witnesses and the knowledge they possessed regarding Ghailani were also obtained from interrogating other Al Qaeda prisoners, that such information would have been obtained even if Ghailani had never been interrogated, and that Ghailani had no right to complain about any procedures used in interrogating the other Al Qaeda prisoners who divulged such information.

[The U.S. government, of course, compares information obtained from interrogating as many Al Qaeda operatives as possible in an attempt to sift the truth from “disinformation” intended to deceive.]

On 10/6/2010, Judge Kaplan made his decision. He prefaced it with the remark that his decision was academic because the U.S. government had admitted in the proceedings before him that Ghailani would not be released even if acquitted, but rather would continue to be held as an “enemy combatant” until the end of the War on Terror. Thereupon, he sustained Ghailani’s objection.

Question 11

What was the purpose of this trial if, as Hillary Clinton stated on Meet the Press on 11/21/2010, the U.S. government would not have released the defendant even if he had been acquitted of all 285 criminal charges?

Answer 11

Who knows???

It is doubtful that the Muslim world was impressed by our legal system before the Ghailani trial because Attorney General Eric Holder, in defending his thwarted-by-Congress decision to stage a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the 9-11 “master mind”) in New York City, guaranteed that KSM would be convicted.

And now our legal system must be the laughing stock of the Muslim world in the wake of the admission by the Obama Administration that it would not have released Ahmed Ghailani even if he had been acquitted of all 285 criminal charges in his show trial.

Question 12

Are there prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that the Obama Administration has decided will not be released under any circumstances?

Answer 12

Yes.

There are at least 43 prisoners who are considered too dangerous to release.

However, the evidence against each of the 43 prisoners cannot be introduced in either a civilian court or a military tribunal without compromising intelligence sources and methods.

Accordingly, the Obama Administration has decided that they will be imprisoned as “enemy combatants” permanently – or at least until the “War on Terror” is over, which probably amounts to the same thing as a practical matter.

It should be noted that Ahmed Ghailani was not among the 43 because, although the Obama Administration had decided that he will never be released even if he had been acquitted of all 285 criminal charges, they thought that the available evidence would guarantee convictions at a show trial.