Nov 16 2005
Are We Safer Now?
This is a stunning number: 83,000. That is the number of terrorists the US has detained in the war on terror (and now in not-so-secret CIA interrogation camps across the globe – thanks Washington Post and your rogue CIA agent pals).
The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL’s largest stadium. The administration defends the practice of holding detainees in prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay as a critical tool to stop the insurgency in Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and get known and suspected terrorists off the streets.
Roughly 14,500 detainees remain in U.S. custody, primarily in Iraq.
The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the “Salt Pit,” an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.
In Iraq, the number in military custody hit a peak on Nov. 1, according to military figures. Nearly 13,900 suspects were in U.S. custody there that day _ partly because U.S. offensives in western Iraq put pressure on insurgents before the October constitutional referendum and December parliamentary elections.
9-11 took 20 suicide terrorists backed up with probably the same number in support and coordination roles (at least). 40 people per 9-11? Let’s say 100 people per 9-11. That is still a lot of 9-11’s that were probably impacted if not stopped. Nearly 14,00o caught in the roach motel that is Iraq as far as terrorists are concerned (and I mean no disrespect to the good people of Iraq who proudly love their homeland, and rightfully so).
The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees _ often Arab and male _ are treated.
Yeah, and I hear the terrorists aren’t too happy with it either!
Oh well, no one is holding a gun to their head to try and attack us.
More at Outside The Beltway, which has this great line:
I’ve been a consistent critic of the use of torture on detainees and of the holding of people, especially American citizens, as “enemy combatants” without reasonable due process rights. Those are separate issues entirely. But it’s rather silly to suggest that, while fighting a war, we should not be taking prisoners.
Yes indeed.
I am confused. Sometimes the CIA is described as a nest of leftist radicals who conspired to take down Bush and need to be “cleaned out,” but at other times, they are described as tough guys who are jailing thousands of terrorists.
It is fine with me if the CIA are keeping the terrorists prisoner.
It only seems confusing, Snapple. The CIA of David Atlee Phillips also had a Philip Agee. It’s a big organization.
It’s the catch and release stuff that pi$$es me off. These are unlawful combatants unprotected by the Geneva conventions. We’d save a lot of lives if we treated them like we did unlawful combatants in WW II. When Americans found German soldiers out of uniform or in the wrong uniform they shot them.
Personally, I’d institute the 9/11 execution protocol for Islamic terrorists. They are lined up on a 1000 foot cliff. The executioners advance towards them bearing flame throwers. They get the choice of being burned alive or jumping. That’s the choice they gave thousands of Americans. Let them see how they like it.