Ed Morissey notes we just released some terrorists from Gitmo into a UK dependency… without notifying the UK, which is now in a very awkward position and furious about it:
The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda.
But it appears that the Government of Bermuda failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send them back to Cuba or risk a grave diplomatic crisis.
The myth of Obama’s competency can’t survive this level of jackassery for long, no matter how hard the press spins for him. It’s getting to the point you can almost hear the Benny Hill music in the background.
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It sounds like Obama tried to put one over on the UK, and pulled it off in this case.
He’s not noted for his love of the Brits.
What happened to sending them to Palau?
There are screwups in every administration. It’s usually easy sport to just look for the screwup of the week and talk about it.
Nevertheless this seems significant. It may, however, not have been a screwup so much as deliberate. If the administration doesn’t much care what the British think, and they found it politically convenient to drop these guys here like that…
the Bush Administration, not the Obama one, is the one that freed the Uighurs and determined they were not a threat. Calling them terrorists is just wrong, factually and ethically.
they are sending some to Palau, others to Bermuda, etc. These guys are the easy ones tod eal with, they arent even terrorists.
Yeah, they’re harmless.
Three of the four Uighurs transferred to Bermuda also admitted that they had firsthand ties to senior terrorists such as Hassan Mahsum and Abdul Haq – the leaders of the ETIM/TIP. Haq was recently designated an al Qaeda terrorist by the Obama administration’s Treasury Department, which noted that he is also a member of al Qaeda’s elite Shura council. Mahsum was killed in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold in northern Pakistan in 2003.
Could have happened to anyone.
“Calling them terrorists is just wrong, factually and ethically.”
Then why have three Western countries (including ours, under Obama) declared they won’t take them? Maybe they smell bad?
Weren’t you just demanding in your last post that we call a spade a spade? If a random lunatic shooting a Holocaust museum guard is a terrorist, then these guys ought to merit the label too.
is it obvious the uk needed to have been consulted? i’m not an expert, and would happily be corrected on this score, but bermuda seems to me at first glance to have a similar arrangement with england that we have with the marshall islands, etc. they have their own senate, premier, laws, and constitution – despite falling under the protectorate of the uk.
Yes. Their foreign policy is controlled by the UK. So when China demands the UK turn them over, the UK has to to take a stand one way or the other.
Much as I fail to see signs of above-median intelligence in this administration, the failure here is even more in Bermuda. Looks like our admin failed to know Bermuda is not a fully independent country, which is rather glaring, but some second-level type there failed to notify his superiors on the island let be the UK Foreign Office. Yes, ignorant and arrogant types come in many styles and backgrounds.
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