Month: January 2009

by Chris Bodenner
No, not these.  These:

[T]he vitamin-sized iPill boasts a microprocessor, power supply, drug reservoir with pump to deliver the medication, and a wireless transmitter to maintain contact with external medical equipment.  The “intelligent pill” is swallowed no differently than with a glass of water, but is able to measure temperature and acidity, and to accurately determine its position in the digestive tract in order to release the medicine precisely when and where it is needed.

Check out the cool demonstration on YouTube.

by Patrick Appel

Gov. David Paterson picked Kirsten Gillibrand to take Hillary Clinton’s senate seat. She doesn’t seem very gay-friendly:

According to the Human Rights Campaign, she voted against the repealing of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation, opposed legislation that would grant equal tax treatment for employer-provided health coverage for domestic partners, opposed legislation to grant same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents the same immigration benefits of married couples and opposed legislation to permit state Medicaid programs to cover low-income, HIV-positive Americans before they develop AIDS.

(Hat tip: Tapped)

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

You quoted Geraghty:

"The options discussed so far are right next to a nuclear power plant in Southern California, right next to the facility for educational and training programs for foreign military students at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas*, and right in the middle of northern Charleston, South Carolina, three miles or so from an airport."

So let me get this straight: on the off chance that one of these terrorists somehow manages to escape from one of the most heavily guarded types of facilities in the country (a supermax prison), Geraghty is concerned that they then might mount an attack on one of the other most heavily guarded types of facilities? Are they going to storm a military training facility with homemade shivs? Or maybe he thinks TSA won’t notice their orange jumpsuits?

 

We can get them here. We can safely confine them here. We can try them here. We can find a place for the convicted and the exonerated. Logistics is not the issue and the opponents of closing Gitmo know it.

 

What they fear is reality. Right now we are detaining upwards of 300 people quasi-legally at best, but these people aren’t "real" to us. They are nameless and faceless for the most part, but all that will change once they enter our legal system. Some of them will be found innocent. Some will tell stories of torture and abuse.

     

Most of the people who went along did so thinking that these people would never, ever see the light of day to tell their story. They want the cat left tightly in the bag.

by Chris Bodenner
As an addendum to Patrick’s post, the following are just a handful of other convicted terrorists currently held in Florence, Colorado:

Zacarias Moussaoui, Conspirator in the September 11, 2001 attacks
Omar Abdel-Rahman, "The Blind Sheik"; involved in 1993 WTC bombing
Richard Colvin Reid, Islamic terrorist, nicknamed the "Shoe Bomber"
Wadih el-Hage, Conspirator in the 1998 US embassy bombings
Mahmud Abouhalima, Islamic Mujahideen leader, 1993 WTC bombing
Jose Padilla, Convicted of aiding terrorists
Mohammed A. Salameh, 1993 WTC bombing

In fact, Salameh (along with Mohammed Saleh and Victor Alvarez, convicted in a separate plot to bomb several targets in NYC) had spent many years in Leavenworth, specifically the federal penitentiary.  So did Thomas Silverstein, who the BBC once called "America’s most dangerous prisoner."  Furthermore, Padilla had spent time in the Charleston brig, where another "enemy combatant," Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, currently resides.  As far as the prison on Ft. Leavenworth, serial killer Ronald Gray has spent the last 20 years there.  Also, during World War II, 14 German prisoners of war were transferred to the USDB after killing their fellow inmates.

by Patrick Appel
Kerry Howley calls for a return to nomadic life.

by Patrick Appel
Or something like that:

Iraq’s government will have dramatically less money to spend this year than expected because of plunging oil prices — a dire economic situation that’s already forced the country to slash rebuilding plans by 40 percent, The Associated Press has learned. As the U.S. seeks a timetable for withdrawal, cutbacks on spending and jobs could trigger heightened violence.

by Chris Bodenner
Patrick wrote, "Geraghty needs to cut down on the 24."  I disagree; his fears seem based more on Con Air:

by Patrick Appel
Marc on what to do with Gitmo detainees:

A large number of present detainees will be prosecuted by the military; the Obama administration wants to review and modify the process. What happens when — if — there is evidence that these detainees are dangerous but not enough to convict them of a crime — is unknown.  As to the most dangerous detainees, policy is undetermined at this point. They will continue to be detained, and their status won’t change. (Republicans ask: what happens when and if Usama Bin Laden is captured? During his campaign, Obama said he’d put UBL on trial in criminal court.)  For insight into the perplexities here, check out this interview with Bruce Riedel, a top Al Qaeda observer and Obama adviser, in Der Spiegel; he’s asked about which group of prisoners will be the most difficult to release:

The Yemenis. They are the largest group among the remaining detainees. According to the US military, which is holding them, there are now 248 prisoners: 27 of them are al-Qaida leadership cadre; 99 are lower level al-Qaida operatives. A big chunk of those are Yemenis. They cannot go back to Yemen because Yemen can’t be trusted to keep dangerous prisoners from rejoining the global jihad. What is left in Guantanamo is the hard core; the easy cases are long gone. Another difficult problem are the Chinese. They cannot go home because China cannot be trusted when it comes to human rights and abuse.

There are Uighur Chinese prisoners in Gitmo…. and China has warned just about every developed country in the world from accepting them.

by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

I lived in Charleston: the Military Brig in Charleston, South Carolina is in the town of North Charleston, SC, where the mayor drives around town with police/military scanner, heavily armed looking for crime to stop (I’m not joking). Nevermind that the Charleston airport abuts the Charleston Air Force base (home of Military airlift command) and could be secured fairly quickly. In order for a detainee to make it from the military brig to the airport, he would have to cross swampland unprepared. The area surrounding the Charleston area is cypress swamp (that goes for miles around the city) full of gators, wild hogs and poisonous snakes and the residential areas are full of people armed to the teeth (with a hair trigger, a state rep got into some hot water for getting drunk and shooting at some power line workers he thought were thieves, he wasn’t charged). Keeping them there might be a good idea. They’ve kept Padilla and others at that Charleston brig for years with no complaint.