Obama freezes Guantanamo Bay for 120 days

[eternal light]

You wouldn't catch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCdznA4sgYtalking bad about the U.S. government.

[zepyep]

You wouldn't catch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCdznA4sgYtalking bad about the U.S. government.

That made a s***load of sense,......

KB

[BUCK'EYE' DOC]

Hey Zepyep.

Lexington and Concord happened in 1775. So of course there was no Continental Army. Each state had their own militia (Boston's militia was called the Minutemen).

Independence was not declared until July 4, 1776, at which time George Washington (he wore his uniform every day to the Continental Congress meetings to hint that he wanted the job) was then appointed General of the Continental Army and was given funds to hire and train soldiers. The soldiers of the Continental Army were PAID, thus they were proper soldiers, trained in the European rules of fighting.

Also, the "Patriot" movie was fiction, as was the depiction of Mel Gibson's family. They were not based on history. But the British General's (Tarleton) depiction and his actions were based on history, of which I posted the link to on previous post.

Also, this is totally irelevant to Gitmo. Just clarifying my previous post.

[Pb Derigable]

After reading all the looney posts. Im glad the United States of America spends more money on defense than every other country combined. Atleast there will be something that will protect us no matter how much Pres. Obama rips the Military apart.

Quick question.

IF OBAMA MOVES GITMO TO NEW YORK, WILL THIS END SO-CALLED SCAR ON OUR VALUES. EVEN THOUGH OUR VALUES IS ALSO AGAINST GAY MARRIAGES AND ABORTIONS, BUT THE LIBS WANT THAT CHANGE ALSO.

[TypeO]

Would what they did be revelant to classify as "terrorist" in today's world? I think so..with shades of grey.

Sorry, I hafta disagree here.

I think the earlier point made in this thread about fighting to break free of political/religious persecution is completely different than trying to impose your particular political/religious beliefs on the rest of the world. (And please people, don't try to equate this with the war in Iraq - removing a ruthless dictator to allow a population the freedom to elect representation of their own choosing is not imposing your will.)

And nowhere in the history of the American Revolution do I recall true terrorism tactics being used.

Guerilla tactics, yes.

Terrorism tactics, no way.

[wanna be drummer]

What do you think Mao Zedong did? I consider him a terrorist.

Same with Che Guevara. You can argue they fought for an end to political persecution no?

[TypeO]

What do you think Mao Zedong did? I consider him a terrorist.

Same with Che Guevara. You can argue they fought for an end to political persecution no?

This is getting too spread out.

I'm only saying the American Revolution can't fairly be considered terrorism.

And back to the original thread, I find it incredible that anyone could advocate putting Guantanamo detainees into our normal Criminal Justice system. Imagine the overload it would create on an already strained system. The vast resources of money many terrorist organizations have would be pumped in to all-too-willing attorneys to create an attack of paperwork involving minutiae of evidence that can't be collected in a war zone the way police seal off a crime scene. Then the flood of suits, etc. that would also ensue. Our legal system is already a joke, with a well-established record of "money talks" justice.

Besides, what other countries put military prisoners into their regular criminal justice system?

None I'm aware of.

[wanna be drummer]

This is getting too spread out.

I'm only saying the American Revolution can't fairly be considered terrorism.

With hindsight, you are correct. But at the time, it would depend who you were asking.

[Knebby]

Sorry Wannabe, but the IRA DID receive MASSIVE funding from the US (look up "NORAID" for a start) and that is absolute FACT, nothing even close to your comparison about Jews and Nazi Germany. Furthermore, this has never been denied by the US.

However, I'm not daft enough to tar all US citizens with the same brush - and I don't believe it had anything to do with the US government either.

Oh and as for Gitmo - good on ya Obama!

[wanna be drummer]

Sorry Wannabe, but the IRA DID receive MASSIVE funding from the US (look up "NORAID" for a start) and that is absolute FACT, nothing even close to your comparison about Jews and Nazi Germany. Furthermore, this has never been denied by the US.

However, I'm not daft enough to tar all US citizens with the same brush - and I don't believe it had anything to do with the US government either.

Oh and as for Gitmo - good on ya Obama!

Sorry Knebby, but thats not proving me wrong. The US government did not provide NORAID with money, it was a bunch of Irish-Americans for the most part was it not?

[eternal light]

[Walesdad]

I sincerly hope that some of the countries within the E.U. can help in finding accomodation for some of these poor innocents that have found themselves guests of the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay.I would suggest that the governments of the likes of Germany,France,Italy,etc should really feel duty bound to do so.After all,its not as if their troops have been busy running out of ammunition lately,is it?As America has played the major part in keeping peace on there own continent for the last sixty odd years,it would seem only fair to me.However,it won't happen though and the U.S will be stuck with this human flotsam.I'm sorry for the more sensitive,anti American readers out there,but I do not believe for one minute that there are many of the captives of that place who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.They also have had better threatment than a captured British or American soldier would have received from them if the circumstances were reversed.If any of these "freedom fighters" turn out to be British they and there family should be deported back to there parents or grandparents country of origin pronto.

[BIGDAN]

Hi all,

Blackmail.

So riddle me this;

where are the rockets coming from from Gaza and Lebanon? Iran.

Who pays for them? The Muslim Religious Tax and Russia.

Where in the Middle East governments does anyone one but Arabs or Muslims hold political office?Know that answer? None, I think. Except Israel.

The Arab 'world' tried it,many times.What happened Danny boy? With US help and aid Israel prevailed.

Six wars and the same conclusion. Yep, Isreal has one of the best equiped, and definatly the best motivated army in the world, but she has only to loose once and she goes the way of the Redskins, ah.

Ignore list,keeps growing!KB

Hi Kev,

I may have gone a bit over the top about saying you blackmail countries with your aid plan, OK, sorry to all you Yanks about that. But as for the Israel-Arab thing, we, the west, the UN, UK and USA, all our fault there.

Without US military aid Israel would be long gone by now, in the conflict of 1973 the Yom Kippur War the Israelies only had three days supply of Air to Surface Missiles, you were resuplying them inside of two days.

As for the recent conflict, so you want my opinion of it? It all started in 1947-1949, when Palestine was about to be divided, 1,000,000 Arabs to 500,000 Jews, 2 to 1 in favour of the Arabs, the west wanted to divide the country in to two, the Arabs would not allow the country to be split in to two with each controling their own part of the country so they went to war, and lost. After this the Jews shipped in millions of European Jews to increase their population. Then they did what I thing caused what is happening now to happen, the threw the Arabs off their land and their farms to make way for the new jewish immigrants, no compensation to the Arabs at all, and even death if they did not comply,

This may help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab-Israeli_conflict

http://revcom.us/a/136/korea_massacres-en.html

I also know that many Jewish people were treated the same in Jordan, Syria and Egypt but there is no reason for Israel to treat the Palestinians in much the same way as many countries, such as Spain, France, Nazi Germany and yes even England treated them, and no good reason why we in the west should support the way Israel acts. Israel started out as a terrorist state, it goes against the UN by attacking civilians with attack helicopters, jet bombers and fighters, and tanks, the UN says that you cant do that, its just double standards. This is where the Muslim world gets the moral high ground from and why it thinks that attacking the US, Spain,India, and Great Britain is justified, because we dont treat Israel the same as we do them, until we address these imbalances the world will burn.

You think that because i'm over here in England that I support my government, you couldnt be more wrong, you think that because i say a lot of bad things about the US government that i'm anti-American, wrong again. Let me tell you a little about me ah?

I've read about world history for about 45 years now, and if theres one thing i've learned its this, the biggest mistakes, the worst attrocities, the big wars are nearly all caused by Empire Building. My country, Great Britain, made all these mistakes many years ago now it seems its your turn. What Wanna-be said about GB is all true, I dont have a issue with people critizing my country for all the wrongs that we do or have done, I do it all the time myself, but many of you Americans cant say the same can you? You want to be seen as the good guys as we did, but all your gonna get is hatred, just as we did, because both of our empires deserved it, we are the axis of evil not the rest of the poor world, but us, in my honest opinion.

I've had a few people on this forum PM me to thank me for saying what I do about America as they are sick and tired of all the flag wavers on here and that i'm only saying what many others feel but are to afraid to say for fear of the childish attacks from forum members that will surly come after they post.

Now lets get to you and me, we started out as friends, now because I have offended you with some of my posts i'm on your "Ignore list,keeps growing!KB " a thing I would have expected from Mr Drummer but never got, aint we a bit old in the tooth for this sort of behavior?

You must know as much about world history as me, your own history I would expect you to know more. So instead of getting on my back could you please help educate some of the people who are not quite as knowledgeable as us or aware of some of the bad things that both of our countries have done and are still doing.

At the end of the day Kev, I would have forght on the side of Parliament during the time of the English Civil War, if I were a Virginian in 1776 I would have been a Rebel, if I were from Virginia in 1861 I would have still been a Rebel, and i'm still a Rebel now. I dont hate you, wanna-be, liz, bigstick, any American, Jew, Blackman, or Muslim, but I do hate our Governments for this is where the real trouble lies, not in the people.

So do I stop posting in the political forum because it causes offence to some? or do I carry on hoping to enlighten those who chose to walk in the dark, its up to you, but surely a friendship is worth more that to win an arguement, aye Kev.

Regards and respect, Danny

PS, Kev, wtf are you guys still doing in Gitmo, are you there just to piss off Castro or is it deeper than that?

[Electrophile]

I'm sorry, were you posting permuations of the Confederate flag for a good reason?

[BIGDAN]

I'm sorry, were you posting permuations of the Confederate flag for a good reason?

Yes, my mate beatbo loves them, and as I have said, I am a Rebel after all, and they are all my own work so i'm looking to make a buck or two in the good old American Tradition. That last bits a joke, OK, I was just trying to be friendly and not to cause offence, the Confederate Flag is still part of the Mississippi one, is it not.

Regards, Danny

[wanna be drummer]

Hi Kev,

I may have gone a bit over the top about saying you blackmail countries with your aid plan, OK, sorry to all you Yanks about that. But as for the Israel-Arab thing, we, the west, the UN, UK and USA, all our fault there.

We didn't help the situation, but that area has been fucked up since the Crusades, long before "we" were even born

Without US military aid Israel would be long gone by now, in the conflict of 1973 the Yom Kippur War the Israelies only had three days supply of Air to Surface Missiles, you were resuplying them inside of two days.

By now, Israel can more than handle themselves without our help I think.

I've read about world history for about 45 years now, and if theres one thing i've learned its this, the biggest mistakes, the worst attrocities, the big wars are nearly all caused by Empire Building. My country, Great Britain, made all these mistakes many years ago now it seems its your turn. What Wanna-be said about GB is all true, I dont have a issue with people critizing my country for all the wrongs that we do or have done, I do it all the time myself, but many of you Americans cant say the same can you? You want to be seen as the good guys as we did, but all your gonna get is hatred, just as we did, because both of our empires deserved it, we are the axis of evil not the rest of the poor world, but us, in my honest opinion.

Yes I did say that...and all I got was a flipped out poster yelling about how you made them profitable.

Control your emotions dude, makes you sound better.

Now lets get to you and me, we started out as friends, now because I have offended you with some of my posts i'm on your "Ignore list,keeps growing!KB " a thing I would have expected from Mr Drummer but never got, aint we a bit old in the tooth for this sort of behavior?

Why would you expect that from me of all people? I've never ignored a single person on the forum...not once.

[eternal light]

I'm sorry for the more sensitive,anti American readers out there,but I do not believe for one minute that there are many of the captives of that place who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.They also have had better threatment than a captured British or American soldier would have received from them if the circumstances were reversed.If any of these "freedom fighters" turn out to be British they and there family should be deported back to there parents or grandparents country of origin pronto.

And if they were three young men (British citizens) on their way to a family wedding from Birmingham airport in England to Pakistan who missed their connecting bus and unexpectedly were caught in a sweep?

You can hear the English accent when they speak, even though they have family ties in Pakistan. One of them stated that it had been 13 years since he had been to Pakistan and he wanted to see his family again. When he arrived at Karachi he did not want to stay at a hotel because he thought it would be too expensive, so he stayed at a mosque.

Part drama, part documentary, The Road to Guantánamo focuses on the Tipton Three, a trio of British Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay for two years until they were released without charge.

Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, The Road To Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British citizens...

http://www.roadtoguantanamomovie.com/

In 2001, four Pakistani Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul and another friend, Monir, travel to Pakistan for a wedding and in a urge of idealism, decide to see the situation of war torn Afganistan which is being bombed by the American forces in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Once there, with the loss of Monir in the wartime chaos, they are captured by Northern Alliance fighters. They are then handed them over the American forces who transport them to the prison camps at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. What follows is three years of relentless imprisonment, interrogations and torture to make them submit to blatantly wrong confessions to being terrorists. In the midst of this abuse, the three struggle to keep their spirits up in that face of this grave injustice. Written by Kenneth Chisholm.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468094/plotsummary

[BIGDAN]

We didn't help the situation, but that area has been fucked up since the Crusades, long before "we" were even born. The Jews were removed in the Diaspora in the 1st and 2nd Century AD by the Romans and didnt become the majority again untill after 1948, the Muslims ruled the country from the capture of Jerusalem in 638 AD untill then. 1310 years. In my opinion we as a people give our name to the land, we dont take our name from the land. Example. I am English (Anglo-Saxon) because the English took this land from the Britons/British who called the land Britannia. Palestine was different and the name goes back to pre Roman times. Under the British Mandate of Palestine and Trans Jordan, the Palestinian Jews ended up with Palestine(Israel) and the Palestinian Arabs with Jordan, with many Arabs living in Israel. The obvious answer to their problem would be to send all the Arabs to Jordan, but Jordan does not want them now, thats is the dilema, and ideas?

By now, Israel can more than handle themselves without our help I think. Yes they can, but not without your continued support, if you waiver in that support the Arabs will move in, and if you dont waiver then Al-Qaeda carries on forever, not such a good deal being the world policeman is it?

Yes I did say that...and all I got was a flipped out poster yelling about how you made them profitable. Yes we did make all our Empire profitable, thats why we were called Great Britain, we run a more profitable and humane Empire than France, Spain, Germany, even than Americia for many years, and all those countries enjoyed protected markets for their goods and British protection. We still have dealings with the Commonwealth and still do trading with them. It wasnt until Great Britain learned that it was unjust (and unruly) and these people wanted-needed to run their own countries that the Empire ended, and so it should end, but dont forget we British were treated just as badly by the Empire as were the people in the overseas terrotories.

Control your emotions dude, makes you sound better. The Valium is out.

Why would you expect that from me of all people? I've never ignored a single person on the forum...not once. I would have in the beginning, but not now.

Hi wanna-be

I Surrender, please take me prisoner, i've had enough.

All i'm saying is this, Americia is making the same mistakes that GB did, that all Empire Builders do, we make the rules and before the ink has had time to dry we break them, GB was no better than what you have been in that respect, and i hate being associated with liars, and by the way I/we are still on the same side, thank god. Sometime I argue in the third person, I take you to places that you might not want to go, it does not mean thats thats my own personal view point, if I havent been clear on that I am now I hope.

My own country has been ruined by succesive governments following economic agendas that do nothing to help the people but make good economic sense, like Thatcher buying coal from Poland because its cheap and at the same time closing all the coalmines in England and Wales thus putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, where for generations these people will now live off of the State. This is also a personal thing to me as well. I have many such pieces of baggage I would not want to burden you with them on here.

We OK now?

Regards, Danny

[Knebby]

Sorry Knebby, but thats not proving me wrong. The US government did not provide NORAID with money, it was a bunch of Irish-Americans for the most part was it not?

I clearly said I didn't think the government were rsponsible. But you repeatedly said the US didn't supply the IRA with money, when in fact they did.

Sorry - the US does extend beyond the government, right?

[Walesdad]

And if they were three young men on their way to a family wedding from Birmingham airport in England to Pakistan who missed their connecting bus and unexpectedly were caught in a sweep?

You can hear the English accent when they speak, even though they have family ties in Pakistan. One of them stated that it had been 13 years since he had been to Pakistan and he wanted to see his family again. When he arrived at Karachi he did not want to stay at a hotel because he thought it would be too expensive, so he stayed at a mosque.

I can't comment about the apparent part documentary/part drama you've mentioned friend because I haven't seen it.I have however read reports that American and British soldiers have overheard radio conversations from the enemy where accents from Yorkshire and the midlands have been heard.If the part documentary/part drama you've mentioned has any sort of basis in fact and some innocent people have been caught up in this,then that is regretable.However,I still feel that the numbers involved will turn out to be tiny compared to those that have gone abroad from this country(the U.K.) to fight British forces.

[Walesdad]

I can't comment about the apparent part documentary/part drama you've mentioned friend because I haven't seen it.I have however read reports that American and British soldiers have overheard radio conversations from the enemy where accents from Yorkshire and the midlands have been heard.If the part documentary/part drama you've mentioned has any sort of basis in fact and some innocent people have been caught up in this,then that is regretable.However,I still feel that the numbers involved will turn out to be tiny compared to those that have gone abroad from this country(the U.K.) to fight British forces.

I should have added to the above that I would have thought that if you could afford to fly from the U.K. to Karachi you would be able to afford to stay in a hotel when you get there,no?

[eternal light]

I should have added to the above that I would have thought that if you could afford to fly from the U.K. to Karachi you would be able to afford to stay in a hotel when you get there,no?

They may not have been that privileged. They were young, impulsive and adventurous. They wanted to see the world. They wandered into unexpected danger.

Tipton's forgotten fourth man: Family's fears for missing Monir

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent

Saturday, 28 February 2004

Monir Ali was the last of the four young Muslim men to leave Tipton in 2001 and travel to Pakistan where they planned to help find one of them a bride.

But their arrival in Karachi coincided with the American attack on Afghanistan and a few weeks later news reached their families that they had all been captured while fighting against the US forces.

In the next few weeks, possibly even days, three of the four so-called "Tipton Taliban" will return from the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison to the Asian community they first left two and half years ago.

No doubt there will be emotional reunions with the families who have had scant information about the conditions in which their sons have been held in the detention camp on the Cuban coast.

But for the family of Monir Ali there will be no such relief.

After initial reports in December 2001 that Monir had been captured along with his friends, the US authorities denied they had ever had any contact with him.

Since then there has been no word from the 23-year-old waiter who told his family he was leaving home to see what the world looked like outside Tipton.

His brother Montaz, 28, says the past two years have been very difficult for the family. "Our father has since passed away which has greatly added to the strain. The other families at least have a bit of peace because they know their sons are alive. For us, who can only speculate what happened, I think the stress can be worse."

The only information concerning Monir's whereabouts since the family lost contact with him in October 2001 is a report that he was being held in an Afghanistan prison. However, extensive inquiries by the Foreign Office have failed to trace him.

Intelligence gathered from Guantanamo Bay suggests that the four friends may well have found themselves in Afghanistan at the end of 2001 but, after reaching Kunduz, the three became separated from Monir.

Montaz remembers his brother as the quietest of the four young friends. "He liked football and some western music but he was more of reader than anything else. He was not as westernised as some of his friends."

After leaving school at 16, Monir found work in the factories. Then the jobs dried up and he began working as a waiter in the local Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants.

"Just before he left [Tipton] he talked about going abroad to study so that he could mix travel with his studying. Like me, he was interested in Islam but not from a fundamentalist point of view, he was just curious about his own religion."

Montaz and Monir regularly attended the same mosque as their three Tipton friends Shafiq Rasul, 24, and Asif Iqbal, 20, Ruhal Ahmed, 20.

It was Asif who had been planning to get married in Pakistan and the others had agreed to help him find a bride.

But after news emerged that they had been captured, stories started to appear about how the group had become involved in radical politics of Islamic fundamentalism.

Some of these stories emanated from members of their own Asian community who began describing the mosque they attended as a hotbed of radicalism that had first given the young men the idea of going to Afghanistan to fight in the Taliban army.

Montaz says this was a deliberate attempt by members of the Muslim community to damage the reputation of the mosque the younger Muslim men attended - known as No 17, named after the terraced house where Monir and his friends chose to pray.

"They said that we were being brainwashed in secret meetings but this was just slander, all part of a power struggle to close down our mosque," says Montaz.

Later stories started to link the mosque to Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, who was jailed for nine years at the Old Bailey after being convicted of soliciting the murder of non-Muslims and stirring up racial hatred.

It was alleged that Faisal twice visited Tipton and spoke at No 17 where he urged the young Muslim men to take up arms in support of the Taliban.

But Montaz says that the stories became more and more exaggerated to suit the agenda of other local Muslim groups who wanted No 17 closed.

"When Sheikh Faisal visited, No 17 wasn't even open - it was an empty building. Why didn't they say these things at the time? Why did they wait until they went to Pakistan?"

The local British National Party (BNP) also used these stories to stir up racial hatred by distributing literature denouncing activities organised by the Tipton Muslims.

A focus of their campaign is Monir Ali's sister, Syeda Khatun, a Labour councillor who has been awarded an MBE for her work on behalf Asian women. The BNP referred to her brother as a terrorist in order to secure her resignation from the council.

Mrs Khatun, 34, one of only two Bangladeshi councillors in Britain, was forced to defend her brother, denying that he was involved in terrorism.

She too is very troubled by the silence surrounding her brother's fate and waits anxiously for the return of his three friends.

But there is a suspicion among some members of Monir's family that the Foreign Office could do more to help find him.

"We have had very little information from the Foreign Office about him," complains Montaz.

This may be because there is so little known. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said that they had passed on to the family everything they knew about his possible whereabouts.

The return of Monir Ali's three friends to Tipton will give the family an invaluable opportunity to gain first-hand information about the events that led to his disappearance.

"I just want to know what really happened so that the speculation will end," says Montaz, who is never without the family's only surviving picture of his brother.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime...nir-571536.html

The New York Review of Books

Volume 53, Number 15 · October 5, 2006

The Prisoners Speak

By Jonathan Raban

The Road to Guantánamo

a film directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross

Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar

by Moazzam Begg with Victoria Brittain

New Press, 397 pp.,

Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power

by Joseph Margulies

Simon and Schuster, 322 pp.

Although Iqbal says the three visitors were supposed to go to his village, he instead meets them in Karachi. Idly sightseeing, the lads pass by another mosque where a preacher is speaking of the "chaos and terror" unleashed by the American invasion of Afghanistan and calling on his congregation to offer their "help." Because the bus fare to Kabul, nearly one thousand miles from Karachi by road, is just 250 rupees ($4.15 at today's rate of exchange), the four tourists, ignorant of everything about Afghanistan except the legendary size of its flatbreads, decide to make the trip. "We jumped in a bus and off we went."

Torrential diarrhea, the scourge of tourism, attacks Shafiq Rasul en route to the Afghan border, and he is somehow forgotten by his friends and left behind by the bus, emptying his bowels in the toilet of yet another mosque, but he is later reunited with his mates after walking across the border. As ever, the storyline is odd, bald, unexplained, but the scenes themselves are rendered so persuasively that one easily forgets the hiatuses between them.

When the group arrives in Kandahar amid bombing, the flatbreads satisfactorily live up to their reputation ("Look at them naans—fucking big!"), though the promised "chaos" of Afghanistan turns out to be strangely elusive. The four adventurers spend one day in Kandahar before leaving for Kabul. British newsreel footage shows the city under relentless aerial bombardment, but the Tipton boys see it differently: swirling red dust, nimble pedestrians dodging traffic, a group of old men placidly smoking and drinking coffee at a sidewalk café. Speaking no Pashto, they become aimless, awkward spectators of the world in which they are adrift. For two and a half weeks, they "chill out," nurse Asif Iqbal, who has fallen desperately sick, grow ever more bored, and decide to go back to Pakistan.

Along the way, they have somehow acquired a minder, or mentor, in Kabul named Sher Khan, who ushers them into a crowded minivan, assuring them that it's Pakistan-bound. But it's the wrong bus. The hapless, geographically challenged travelers are transported north to Kunduz instead of south toward Karachi—straight into the war zone where Northern Alliance troops under General Rashid Dostum, assisted by American bombers, are wresting the city from the Taliban and taking many thousands of prisoners.

When Northern Alliance troops en-ter Kunduz, prompting an evacuation, Monir Ali is lost in the dash to the city's outskirts, apparently left behind in Kunduz as the rest of the Tiptonites scramble aboard a moving truck, laden with armed men on the run. Outside the city they encounter true chaos, brought to life by the directors with manic and persuasive exuberance. Illuminated by exploding bombs on the horizon, panicked humans surge back and forth, on foot and in trucks, their movements simultaneously as suggestive and as unintelligible as Tristram Shandy's marbled page. Shouts from the swarm are translated into contradictory subtitles: "We are surrendering!" "We have safe passage!"

By the light of day, a kind of order emerges. The arid terrain of rock and shale is littered with the bodies of men killed when the trucks in which they were traveling overnight were bombed. After helping to bury the dead and leaping aboard a passing truck, they are captured by the Northern Alliance and forced to march through the landscape with a trudging column of what look like exhausted refugees. On every salient outcrop stands a man wearing a makeshift camouflage top and holding a machine gun. One has to work quite hard to make sense of what one's seeing here and to figure out that the gunmen are with the Northern Alliance and the refugees are their captives. Most of the prisoners wear baggy Afghan tribal dress, but here and there one spots an Arab kaffiyeh, a Pakistani tunic, and, materializing from the edge of the screen, Ruhel Ahmed's trademark claret-colored Gap hoodie.

As William S. Lind and others wrote in their important 1989 article "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation," in asymmetric warfare "the distinction between 'civilian' and 'military' may disappear."[1] In the picture on the screen, that distinction has entirely disappeared: the Northern Alliance brigands are clad in a sort of homemade gesture at military uniform but the hundreds of shabby men passing before the camera have perfectly illegible identities. Searching the faces and the clothes, all you can say with certainty is that everyone appears to be a Muslim. Some are, you presume, Taliban fighters, some may be al-Qaeda. But there's ample room in this bedraggled crowd for unlucky shepherds, cooks, bus drivers, butchers, and bakers; room, too, for a trio of clueless English tourists. You are now looking at the world almost exactly as it must appear to the American interrogators to whom the enormous, indiscriminate mixed bag of humanity will shortly be delivered.

It has to be remembered that leaflets promising bounty of up to $5,000 for a Taliban fighter and $10,000 for a member of al-Qaeda were then being air-dropped all over Afghanistan, falling, as Donald Rumsfeld boasted at the time, "like snowflakes in December in Chicago." One such leaflet read, in part:

You can receive millions of dollars for helping the Anti-Taliban Force catch Al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.[2]

Inevitably, Afghans turned in their next-door neighbors, old rivals, teachers who'd given them a failing grade. Non-Pashto-speaking foreigners like the Tipton Three were of course prime bounty material.

Between Kunduz and the jail at Sheberghan, 180 miles to the west, the Northern Alliance packed their prisoners so tightly into shipping containers that many died of suffocation. Still more were killed when their containers were raked by machine-gun fire in the disputed Dasht-i-Leili massacre (depending on the source, the dead numbered from 250 to 3,000), named for the site of the mass grave near Sheberghan where the victims were buried. The Tiptonites survive this horror only to face violent interrogation by US intelligence agents at the prison. They are now among the "worst of the worst," in Bush's words; alleged al-Qaeda terrorists bent on the destruction of Western civilization. They are also, as native English speakers, natural targets of opportunity for American interrogators demanding to know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

In the hellhole of Sheberghan, the prisoners are shaved, stripped naked, forced into orange jumpsuits, gloves, earmuffs, black goggles, and hoods—the outlandish uniform in which they will be flown to Guantánamo. Whatever they may have been before, tour-ists, shepherds, or fighters, they now look like an army of enemy aliens. The transformation wrought on them by their American captors is a work of cunning genius: arriving at Sheberghan, they were forlorn, exhausted, starving men; departing on the flight to Cuba, they are made to seem evil orange monsters, identical, inhuman, and, as their shackles bear witness, very, very dangerous.

Up to the moment when Ruhel Ahmed is forced into a Guantánamo uniform, his Gap hoodie leads such an insistent life of its own that one comes to read it as a sly emblem of the Tipton Three's story. Travelers' tales, riddled with faulty recollections, inventions, and self-serving omissions, are notoriously untrustworthy, and this one is true to the genre. The artfulness of The Road to Guantánamolies in its implicit acknowledgment that neither the directors, nor the audience, nor the American inquisitors are in a position to get to the bottom of what "really" happened. The trio's account may be true in all essential details, with a lot of bits left out, or it may be—to borrow the subtitle of Winterbottom's last movie—a cock and bull story. We'll never know.

Yet the Tipton Three's version of events has one enormous strength: in the end, it holds together better than the rival narrative that is told by their captors at Guantánamo. For the Americans possess a photograph and video of a rally in Afghanistan, held in 2000, where Mohamed Atta met with Osama bin Laden, and they claim to have identified Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed, and Shafiq Rasul among the indistinct faces in the crowd. So a kind of battle of the narratives ensues as we watch the three being repeatedly kicked, beaten, and tormented by ear-splitting music and strobe lights in the interrogators' attempt to make them admit the truth of the American story. In a sequence of nearly unendurable scenes, the Tipton Three try to hold their ground (though a confession of a meeting with Atta and bin Laden was extracted from Rasul), until at last their captors reluctantly concede that there's a mighty hole in their own tale, too. For throughout 2000, Rasul was employed at a branch of Curry's, the British chain electrical store, while Ahmed and Iqbal were both on parole for various offenses including fraud, receiving stolen goods, and violent disorder. Unlike almost everything else in the entire film, those facts were verifiable. "The police were our alibi," Ahmed says in an interview, with understandable ironic relish.

Held for a further three months at Guantánamo, the trio were eventually sent back to Britain in the early spring of 2004, where they were released without charge. They had been in American detention for more than two years.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19356

[BIGDAN]

"Sorry Knebby, but thats not proving me wrong. The US government did not provide NORAID with money, it was a bunch of Irish-Americans for the most part was it not?"

I clearly said I didn't think the government were rsponsible. But you repeatedly said the US didn't supply the IRA with money, when in fact they did.

Sorry - the US does extend beyond the government, right?

Hi Knebby, an a Happy New Year by the way.

What wanna-be does not get is this, The American Government knew about the collection of money and the sale of arms to the IRA and chose to do nothing about it, in a court of Law that makes them "Implicit", guilty by allowing it to happen whilst in charge. Then again the British Government also allowed this collection of money in many of the Irish Pubs I frequented as a youth in London, and still do.

Isnt that one of the reasons why we went in to Afghanistan, because their Government, The Taliban, would not hand over to us Bin Laden, so we held them "Implicit" in to what he had done and because he was not handed over to our authorities we went to war with them?

Regards, Danny

[wanna be drummer]

I clearly said I didn't think the government were rsponsible. But you repeatedly said the US didn't supply the IRA with money, when in fact they did.

Sorry - the US does extend beyond the government, right?

True, but it was only a handful of citizens. I never denied that. But our argument (me and Danny anyways) was the government supplying the IRA with money

[wanna be drummer]

Hi Knebby, an a Happy New Year by the way.

What wanna-be does not get is this, The American Government knew about the collection of money and the sale of arms to the IRA and chose to do nothing about it, in a court of Law that makes them "Implicit", guilty by allowing it to happen whilst in charge. Then again the British Government also allowed this collection of money in many of the Irish Pubs I frequented as a youth in London, and still do.

Isnt that one of the reasons why we went in to Afghanistan, because their Government, The Taliban, would not hand over to us Bin Laden, so we held them "Implicit" in to what he had done and because he was not handed over to our authorities we went to war with them?

Regards, Danny

The reason the government couldn't do anything because the IRA didn't just come out and ask for bills. They had their little fundraising groups like NORAID someone mentioned. Our judicial system is a piece, so it's not as easy as just saying "Those are going to the IRA, so now its illegal." There's a big process for it.