Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate:
Obama can close Guantanamo
At his news conference on Tuesday, President Barack Obama for the first time in years spoke about the controversial detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which he had promised to close when he first took office.
“Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” Obama said, responding to a reporter’s question. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.” He went on to acknowledge that more than half the detainees have been officially cleared for release.
As if to forestall the obvious next question – then why hasn’t he closed it? – the president blamed the prison’s continued existence on Congress. “Congress,” he said, “determined that they would not let us close it.”
Though Congress has made closing the prison difficult, Obama is the one who put his legacy on the line by ordering its closure within days of assuming office. It’s still in his power to follow through.
from The Great Debate:
Boston bomber acted as ‘enemy combatant’
The Obama administration announced on Monday that suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would “not be treated as an enemy combatant” who would be tried in a special military tribunal. Instead, White House spokesman Jay Carney declared, “we will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice.”
But this decision is a grave mistake for legal, political and practical reasons. As we sift through the challenging implications of last week’s events, we must aim to deter future acts of terror on our soil by U.S. citizens and legal residents. Treating and trying domestic terrorists as enemy combatants can provide such a deterrent.
from The Edgy Optimist:
After Boston, a new, more balanced outrage
Events unfolded rapidly in Boston this week, from the bombing on Monday to release of photos of the suspects on Thursday to the citywide manhunt for one brother and the killing of the other. While we now know that the two young men are ethnic Chechens who spent time in Kyrgyzstan, we know nothing as yet about why they did what they did.
But perhaps less important than whatever their rationale turns out to have been is how the United States is reacting to the events of this week. On that score, the initial reactions here suggest that we may have turned a post-9/11 corner, still shocked, still pained, but no longer so fearful, so ready to blame religious zealots, and so willing to discard the freedoms that give us such strengths and yet can, at times, leave us so vulnerable.
from The Great Debate:
Holding Boston hostage
Boston was in lockdown Friday. The machinery of a major metropolitan area in the richest nation on earth had come to a grinding halt. We know why this is happened – a terrorist manhunt – but how, exactly, does a modern bustling city come to a full stop?
In fact, much of ordinary life continues. Water still comes from the taps for a shower; you can telephone your family and friends; you can even work on your computer or read quietly in the backyard. But one key aspect of city life stopped: the movement of people. What matters most in a lockdown of this scale is the ability to halt the circulation of people.
from David Rohde:
The Hillary doctrine?
The partisan political theater, of course, was top-notch. Rand Paul’s declaration that he would have fired Hillary Clinton; her angry rebuttal of Ron Johnson’s insistence that the administration misled the American people about the Benghazi attack; John McCain’s continued – and legitimate – outrage at the slapdash security the State Department provided for its employees.
Amid the posturing, though, ran a separate question: what strategy, if any, does the United States have to counter the militant groups running rampant across North and West Africa? Clinton herself summed up the sad state of play during her tense exchange with McCain.
from Expert Zone:
Emerging priorities in the war against terrorism
(The views expressed in this column are the author's own and do not represent those of Reuters)
There are different models that nations have adopted to fight insurgencies. Sri Lanka used all the forces at its disposal. The results, humanitarian aspects set aside, led to the insurgent movement being defeated comprehensively.
from Photographers Blog:
Another ground zero
By Fredy Builes
It began as a normal summer day in cold Bogota, with bright sun lighting up the morning. I had just picked up one of my favorite lenses from a repair shop, and was carrying a camera and wide angle lens in a bag while heading for a local university which I have done photo assignments for. As I talked to Vicky, the head of the journalism school, all of a sudden a great explosion shook us. In her eyes I saw the same fear that I was feeling, as the deafening sound left us speechless. It was only instinct that carried me to the street.
I ran out of the university towards the place of the explosion like a bull being released into the ring. Ground zero was right on a nearby street in downtown Bogota, where attacks like this haven't happened in a very long time. I walked through the strange atmosphere of shocked people, deafening noise and fear, to reach the epicenter. I was surrounded by terror, blood, screams, sobs, rumors of another bomb, and death exposed for all to see.
from The Great Debate:
Bringing a terror mastermind to justice
Four months after retaliation for the 9/11 attacks he masterminded brought devastation to al Qaeda’s haven in Afghanistan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was living openly in neighboring Karachi, Pakistan and taking leisurely walks with his new prize recruit – a young computer geek from Maryland who wanted to join the jihad.
They talked about how Majid Shoukat Khan might poison water wells in the United States and blow up his family's gas station. Mohammed was especially enthusiastic about using his young associate to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, perhaps by sneaking a suicide bomber into Khan’s planned arranged wedding to the daughter of a prominent Pakistani general.
from The Great Debate:
The case for letting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed live
What should be done with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? If the Defense Department is to be believed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks on America is guilty of mass murder and crimes against humanity. Even if the evidence elicited by waterboarding him 183 times is void, his declaration in 2002 that “I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation from A to Z” should ensure conviction.
In addition to the 9/11 attacks that killed 2,973, he is credited with commissioning shoe-bomber Richard Reid to down a transatlantic jetliner laden with 300 passengers; planning the 1993 attempt to fell the Twin Towers, the Bali nightclub bombing that killed 200 and a bomb attack in Istanbul in 2003 that killed 60; as well as plots to assassinate Pope John Paul II and Bill Clinton and to demolish the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. For those who would argue Mohammed is a war combatant rather than a dangerous psychotic, it should also be noted that he personally sawed off the head of the American reporter Daniel Pearl.
from Photographers Blog:
Soccer SWAT team
By Peter Andrews
Through my Polish police contacts, I learned that members of various SWAT teams and the border guards would hold a special training exercise in the town of Zamosc. The exercise was conducted as part of preparations by the Polish special forces leading up to the EURO 2012 soccer tournament, to be held in Poland and Ukraine this summer. This training event was to be observed by various representatives from different countries.
As I arrived at the military training ground, I realized that some of the instructors were my old friends whom I have known for as many as eighteen years. It helped me immensely to be accepted by people who were being trained. The forces were divided into three teams of SWAT and border guards being trained on different public transport vehicles, in various techniques of approaching a hijacked bus followed by mastering the techniques of entering and rescuing hostages from inside the vehicle.
