In a post entitled ‘Why McCain Is Pushing Boumediene,’ Andrew Sullivan wrote in his blog tonight:

Defending suspected terrorists’ human rights isn’t popular [Sullivan citing WaPo’s poll that found “61 percent said non-citizens suspected of terrorism should not have these rights under the U.S. Constitution; 34 percent said they should.”] – especially when those suspects are foreign, have brown skin and speak a different language. But if most Americans fully understood how many innocents have been swept into the Bush gulag, they might be more circumspect.

Mr. Sullivan could have answered his own question and not left Americans to falsely believe that a large percentage of Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

Answer: 38 were innocent.

A mere thirty-eight out of the eight-hundred detainees taken to Guantanamo were later determined to be innocent and released.

An additional five-hundred who were known to be al Qaeda combatants (or members of other Islamic terrorist groups) have also been released. The nations that received the latter jihadists agreed to prosecute them or at least keep them from returning to the battlefield. Yet few were prosecuted (none successfully), several found ambulance-chasing lawyers in their home countries and are now suing, and nearly all returned home to a heroes welcome. Others conveniently “escaped” from their prisons such as in Yemen where several even managed to walk out the front door while the guards were busy elsewhere.

Thirty-seven — just one less than the number found to be innocent — went back to killing and trying to kill their fellow Muslims and coalition forces

Pentagon officials have confirmed that on April 29, 2008, former Guantanamo detainee Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi blew himself up in Mosul, Iraq, killing seven Iraqi police officers plus injuring twenty-nine more really innocent bystanders. Al-Ajmi was one of eight Kuwaitis from among what their propagandist lawyers and PR team dubbed the ‘Kuwaiti 12’ who were released in 2005. His family is now suing the Kuwaiti government over its issuing him a passport and allowing him to leave the country.

In addition, family members of the four remaining Kuwaitis at Guantanamo are asking that they not be released until their government can assure them they will keep their jihadist from blowing themselves up as well.

On May 9, 2008, the Wall Street Journal confirmed the numbers plus identified a couple more jihadists by name:

Ajmi’s story is hardly unique. Some 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo over the years, mostly into foreign custody. Another 65 of the remaining 270 detainees are also slated to go. Yet of all the prisoners released, the Pentagon is confident that only 38 pose no security threat. So much for the notion that the Gitmo detainees consist mostly of wrong-time, wrong-place innocents caught up in an American maw.

The Defense Intelligence Agency reported on May 1 that at least 36 former Guantanamo inmates have “returned to the fight.” They include Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, who was released after eight months in Gitmo and later became the Taliban’s regional commander in Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. He was killed by Afghan security forces in September 2004.

Another former detainee, Abdullah Mahsud, was released from Guantanamo in March 2004. He later kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan (one of whom was shot during a rescue operation). In July 2007 he blew himself up as Pakistani police sought to apprehend him.

So, why is Mr. Sullivan misleading Americans in a blog post entitled ‘Why McCain Is Pushing Boumediene‘ about the number of innocent detainees? Answer: Andrew Sullivan, like Barack Obama, is far more concerned about the civil rights and due process of the Islamic terrorists who would gleefully murder 300 million Americans in their quest for peace through world subjugation. The short answer: Andrew Sullivan is a political hack for Barack Obama.

——

Oh, by the way, full disclosure about me.