MAJ (RET) Montgomery J. Granger
Three Gitmo detainees, including the self-admitted 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, have been granted plea deals by the United States in return for their confessions and willingness to answer questions and give explanations, respectively from and to the families of victims of the atrocities of 9/11.
The deals give the admitted terrorists life in prison rather than face the possibility of a death penalty should they have failed to win a military justice trial based on amendments to the trial rights extended to them via the Obama administration in the 2009 Military Commissions Act, which gave detainees accused of war crimes virtually the same rights you or I would enjoy in a federal court of law. They chose not to risk death if convicted.
This decision is opposed by all sorts of 9/11 contingencies, who had hoped, after 22 years in military detention, that the perpetrators of 9/11 and the murderers of their families and loved ones, would finally face justice.
With this decision, the Biden administration, and those bureaucrats and technocrats running the detention justice system at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have demonstrated that Sharia Muslims are more important than dead Americans and their families and loved ones.
It has not yet been determined where the convicts will spend the rest of their lives, but current law prevents them from being moved to US territory.
Twenty two years. Life in prison for murdering nearly 3,000 people in cold blood, triggering multiple armed conflicts, a War on Terror, and over 3,000 related deaths from conditions caused by the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City.
This is not justice by any stretch of the word, and common sense Americans, especially those directly affected by this decision, are not having it. I am not having it.
The Original Mission At Gitmo
When my unit was mobilized for deployment to Gitmo in January of 2002 we were trained and ready to conduct detention operations and determine the status of detained persons as per the Geneva Conventions, the Law of War, and US military regulations and policy.
But very quickly, and then over time, it became apparent that the US government had no intention of trying and executing war criminals involved with 9/11.
Only the US Army has the background, experience, and training to perform detention and status operations for detainees and enemy prisoners of war. But the mission at Gitmo was a combined arms mission, headed at first by a Marine Corps General, not trained in detention operations.
My unit was activated and deployed for the First Gulf War when thousands of Iraqi lawful combatants surrendered in droves at the US invasion of Kuwait and Iraq.
Hasty detention facilities were erected and operations were conducted according to the Geneva Conventions and Law of War. Thousands of US Army EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War) soldiers did their duty with honor, integrity, and grit, caring for and safeguarding starving and terrified Iraqi soldiers. Within about a week after the surrender of Iraqi forces and the end of the conflict, most lawful combatant enemy soldiers had been repatriated, in accordance with the law.
Gitmo was different because the detainees captured on the War on Terror battlefield after 9/11 were unlawful combatants, not entitled to the rights or privileges of POWs, who followed the rules. Tens of thousands of unlawful combatants were captured on the battlefield in the War on Terror, but less than 800 were ever sent to Gitmo. Those sent there were described by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as the “worst of the worst.” They were at least unlawful combatants suspected of having valuable information and perhaps guilty of war crimes.
The last time the US captured unlawful combatants on US soil, in 1942, 6 of 8 captured German saboteurs were denied habeas corpus, tried by a military commission, and then executed within 8 weeks of capture. Oh, and none of them had hurt a fly or destroyed any property. They were merely convicted of having the means and intent to do so, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Law of War. Their status as unlawful combatants, or spies, sealed their fates.
What Was Different In the War On Terror?
A desire to appease the world and leftist opinion that the detainees were the victims. Torture, abuse, lack of due process rights, etc., led to an unrelenting onslaught of lies, rumors, innuendo, and subterfuge in an effort to frame the US as conducting extra-legal operations and operating a gulag at Gitmo.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In my book, “Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior,” about medical, preventive medical, and environmental operations at Gitmo at the beginning of the mission there, I lament the favorable treatment of detainees I was duty bound to care for, despite their participation in the murder of innocent civilians on 9/11.
Overall, 99 percent of US military personnel at Gitmo were and are honorable, serving with integrity and professionalism. The only institutionalized abuse at Gitmo was perpetrated by detainees against guards, with sucker punches, threats, and Gitmo cocktails: bodily fluids of detainees splashed onto guards as a form of harassment.
Only a handful of Gitmo detainees were waterboarded, which was legal and approved at the time, to obtain valuable information that saved many lives. Waterboarding and other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques did not meet the accepted international definition of torture at the time, nor were they routinely performed on a wide population of detainees.
However, as detainees were released, various lies and stories perpetrated by detainees began to inform a broader audience internationally that torture and abuse were routine at Gitmo.
You tell me: over 740 detainees of just under 800 who ever were held at Gitmo have been RELEASED, and none of them were beheaded, executed, blown up, hacked to death, dragged naked and lifeless through the streets, drowned, or burned alive. All things our enemies have done to us and/or our allies. There is no moral comparison between Gitmo and how our enemies treat their captives. 30 percent of released detainees are confirmed to have returned to the War on Terror. What about the other 70 percent we don’t know about? Where are they?
The War on Terror has been a failure if measured by global terror incidents and the spread of radical Islam.
When Muhammad, the founder of Islam died, the Muslim faith was isolated to the Arabian Peninsula, with an unknown number of followers. Since then, 1,400 years later, over 50 countries have a Muslim majority. Most mosques are built on the foundations of Jewish temples and Christian churches.
Jews and Christians are relentlessly hunted down and murdered by hoards of radical Islamists, for no other reason than their faith, yet Western countries are inundated with radical Muslim “immigrants” bent on intimidating and conquering their religious rivals.
Sharia Muslims will never assimilate into Western culture nor respect Western laws. They want only theocracy – government and religion in one – which is diametrically opposed to democracy.
This decision not to prosecute the mastermind and accomplices of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is another nail in the War on Terror coffin containing the hopes and prayers of those victims of 9/11 that justice would be served.
For over 22 years, the powers that be have failed to provide a venue capable of doing what we did in 1942 with German enemies who landed in this country for evil purposes.
This decision is a disgrace and is humiliating to any patriotic American, especially those who gave their lives, limbs, or lost loved ones or family on 9/11 or in the Global War on Terror.