Jun
11
President Obama has found a home for his troublesome Uighur terrorists. Not Germany, not somewhere in the Middle East and not as Americans feared, in the United States either. Nope, the brand new place for dumping terrorists is the Pacific Island of Palau.
As per HotAir:
President Johnson Toribiong said Palau was accepting the detainees “as a humanitarian gesture” intended to help them restart their lives. His archipelago, with a population of about 20,000, will accept up to 17 of the detainees subject to periodic review, Toribiong said in a statement released to The Associated Press.
That’s jolly nice of them to do it as a humanitarian gesture. What nice people. Unfortunately, this ‘humanitarian gesture’ comes at a price, $200 million to be precise. This doubling of their GDP is Obama’s bribe to have Palau take a troublesome political dilemma off his hands. I wonder how many calls the Obama administration had to make dangling $200M as an incentive before they finally reached Palau. That’s a long call sheet.
What price terrorism? $12 milion per head it seems.
We’ve had some discussions on here about how America has used it’s economic muscle to force smaller nations to it’s will. I wonder how bribing a tiny nation to house terrorists fits into that theme.
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16 Responses to “Soft Power? No Just Bloody Expensive Power”
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On what legal basis are these people going to end up in Palau (which I thought was a kind of rice dish)?
Have they been tried, convicted and are now being deported? Or are they just being sent there because…?
Do they have any say on where they are sent. Are they now non-persons because no-one can work out what to do with them?
Ronnie
Still it’s South Pacific, so hardly torture. You’ll be pleased
Cabbie
I’d be pleased if they sent me there.
It turns out that these 22 people, Uighurs, were found not to be enemy combatants four years ago and yet they have been languishing at GITMO since, un-charged and without reason. Now they are to be sent to an island in the Pacific at the whim of the US President.
Where will their journey end…Mars, the rings of Saturn?
I suppose its possible that they didn’t have families or meaningful lives before they were captured/apprehended/kidnapped/grabbed/lifted/pinched/nicked…I wonder what the correct term is for this?
However, we will never know because they are Uighurs and therefore of no value at all.
Interesting.
If I write the words ‘Cabbie, the terrorist held at GITMO for eight years…’ nobody will bat an eye. They will assume that Cabbie, who they have never met, is indeed a terrorist because its down here in black and white.
But what if he’s not? Suppose he’s just been stuck at GITMO for six years for no reason?
But it says here that he’s a terrorist…
So easy to type the word ‘terrorist’. Go on, you can all do it, its simple. And by so-doing you will immediately change the percieved legal status of another human being.
Who knows, maybe they too will be sent to an island in the Pacific.
Looks like that that American Tax payer is paying the double whammy for these guys.
Once when they were bought off the Pakistani Army and local warlords and now to sweep them under the carpet.
I think that Obama and America in general is being very wimpish about this put them on trial and then lock’em up in the States or just let them go.
Why are leaders so lilly-livered today? If they are gooks, shoot them and if they are innocent, release them.
‘Simples’ as the Meerkat in the Money-market.com advert says!
Ronnie….rice dish…nice one…lol
WTF I agree with Original Tony twice in row (apart from the shooting them bit)
I’m off a lie down then over to Kos just in case I’m turning into a wingnut !
Update
Ed “Scaredey Cat” Morrissey said on hot air
“Hopefully it will work out all right for Palau and its tourists, but if I were making decisions on expensive South Pacific vacations, I’d start looking elsewhere.”
Wingnuts should probably also avoid vacationing in Paris, the locale of recently released (and completely innocent) Guantanamo detainee Lakdhar Boumediene; Australia, where released Guantanamo detainee David Hicks is to be found roaming free; The UK, where released and tortured Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed and Moazzam Begg are currently living. I quake in my boots everytime I open the front door.
In fact now that the US is full of right-wing domestic terrorists where is the average Scaredey Cat wingnut going to go on holiday?
Ronnie
The difference between calling me a terrorist and them, is that I haven’t visited training camps in the Tora Bora mountains. What, did they think it was a holiday resort or something? Come on Ronnie, even for moonbats like yourself, sometimes 2+2 does equal 4.
Cabbie
Kinda missing my point.
I’d hoped we’d moved beyond burning at the stake and lynch mobs. 2+2 = 4 with evidence in a court of law. That’s how we do it in the West.
Ronnie
Really? The three IRA men in Gibraltar weren’t read their rights, nor were the hostage takers at the Iranian embassy, nor were the pirates who took the American captain hostage.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that there is no difference between a terrorist and a normal criminal. You really are delusional.
I never said anything about lynch mobs, but I’m not so blind to see that when a person attends a terrorist training camp, there’s a pretty good chance they are a terrorist. Next you’ll be telling us that Osama Bin Laden is just misunderstood. But what can one expect from someone who believes that a world with Saddam Hussein is better than one without.
Ooooh, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Judge Cabbie.
Did these 22 people have the designation enemy combatant removed 4 years ago? Have they been charged with anything? Why have they been detained for that length of time without charge, having apparently been cleared of taking part in any terrorist activity?
The terrorits on the Achille Lauro and in the Iranian Embassy seige were armed, active and obviously a grave threat.
The IRA unit on Gibraltar were unarmed at the time of their being shot but who knows what they were doing, it is still an issue fiercely debated.
As for the Uighurs, I suppose we have to accept what you say about them. If it makes you happy. However, I think you’ll find that their terrorist activity is directed against the Chinese government and that they had gone to Afghanistan to get away from Chinese oppression.
I wonder if you would call them terrorists if they came from Tibet?
Ronnie
I’m well aware of the lack of enemy combatant status for the Uighurs. I only called them terrorists, not terrorists targetting America or the West. I have a problem with people who kill innocent civilians deliberately. Why? Do you not?
Cabbie:
“I’m well aware of the lack of enemy combatant status for the Uighurs. I only called them terrorists, not terrorists targetting America or the West.”
Sorry cabbie but as Ronnie pointed out , these men had been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activity FOUR YEARS AGO. So not only is the fact that they had not been released wrong, it’s also wrong to state that you can still call them terrorists.
It’s like me wrongly saying all muslims are terrorists when we all know that there are hundreds of millions of muslims around the world who have nothing to do with the activites of groups like al queda, but l link them anyway.
Cabbie.
‘I have a problem with people who kill innocent civilians deliberately. Why? Do you not?’
Have these Uighurs killed any innocent civilians in a terrorist attack? I know the Chinese government wants them but I’ve not read why.
Do you think my answer to your last, general, smokescreen of a question is no?