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...Afghanistan: Having proclaimed it "the right war" on the campaign trail, Obama initially sought to lower the benchmark of success to avoid nation-building or expansive counterinsurgency and instead focus narrowly on preventing al-Qaeda from restoring its presence there. But the commander he appointed to take charge of the war, General Stanley McChrystal, warned the White House last summer that the U.S. side was losing in Afghanistan and requested tens of thousands more troops to stop the Taliban's advance. After months of internal debate, Obama opted to send reinforcements, with the hopelessly optimistic caveat that they would begin...
...America. That's just what happened to Saeed Ali Shehri. A Saudi national freed for unspecified reasons from the America's Cuba-based lockup in 2007, he returned home, underwent a Saudi rehabilitation program - apparently with his fingers crossed - and has ended up as the second-ranking leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). From there, it appears his organization helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab plot his failed Christmas bombing of Northwest Flight 253. (See how al-Qaeda is creating a crisis in Yemen...
Yemen is plainly becoming an al-Qaeda hotbed. In addition to Shehri, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - the Yemeni-based, American-raised cyber pen pal of Army Major Nidal Hasan who is accused of killing 13 Army personnel at Fort Hood in November - is now living in Yemen and may have been in contact with Abdulmutallab. The chief religious adviser of the Yemeni-based AQAP - Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish - also did time at Guantánamo. "The President's continual release of Guantánamo Bay detainees presents an unacceptable risk to American lives," said retired U.S. Navy commander Kirk...
During his presidential campaign, Obama criticized Guantánamo as little more than terrorist advertising. The senior Administration official echoed that refrain, saying al-Qaeda has recently used Guantánamo as one of its "recruiting and motivational tools." Because of its notorious reputation, he said, it should be closed as quickly as possible. Critics counter that sending detainees back home - especially to poorer nations like Yemen (where unemployment hovers around 40%) - could allow them to attack again, especially if they were radicalized during their Guantánamo stay. And they maintain that sending such detainees to the Illinois prison...
...Congress 15 days before they were slated to be transferred. Among them were several whose cases had received some attention in the controversy over detainees at Guantánamo: Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, who was captured in Karachi, Pakistan where was the head of a local charity with alleged al-Qaeda links; Farouq Ali Ahmed, who had traveled to Afghanistan to teach children the Koran and was arrested without a passport in Pakistan; and Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a doctor who treated al-Qaeda fighters at the battle of Tora Bora and met Osama bin Laden briefly...