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Donald Trump Signs Executive Order to Keep Guantánamo Bay Open

posted by martyb on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:49AM   
from the indefinite-detention dept.

DeathMonkey writes:

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to keep the Guantánamo Bay prison camp open, reversing the policy of the Obama administration.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Trump said he had directed the defence secretary, James Mattis, "to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay". He added that he expected that "in many cases" captured terrorists would be sent to the camp.

The Trump executive order instructs Mattis, in consultation with the secretary of state and other officials, to deliver a new policy on battlefield detentions, "including policies governing transfer of individuals to US Naval Station Guantánamo Bay" within 90 days.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/guantanamo-bay-trump-signs-executive-order-to-keep-prison-open

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Original Submission

• Re:well of course Re:well of course (Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:41PM (3 children)

  by c0lo (156) on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:41PM (#631446) Journal

  Hey - why don't we just give weapons to whatever remains of ISIS/DAESH? They are, after all, trying to depose a regime that we don't like very much, right?

  Here's something [wired.com] I reckon you'll like - I know I did:

  ...Our first stop is a walled compound that al-Hakim says could have been a mosque, where several ISIS-designed mortars lie in the entrance. They are deceptively simple on first blush, looking like standard American and Soviet mortars. But unlike those models, which come in a number of standard sizes (60 mm, 81 mm, 82 mm, 120 mm, and so on), these mortars are 119.5 mm, to match the inside diameter of the repurposed steel pipes that ISIS uses for launch tubes. This may sound like a small change, but mortars must fit perfectly in their launchers so that sufficient gas pressure can build for ejection. ISIS’ quality control tolerances are extremely tight, often down to a tenth of a millimeter....

  Spleeters carefully picks through the stacks of warheads until he finds what he’s been looking for: “I’ve got a PG-9 round, habibi,” Spleeters exclaims to al-Hakim. It is a Romanian rocket marked with lot number 12-14-451; Spleeters has spent the past year tracking this very serial number. In October 2014, Romania sold 9,252 rocket-propelled grenades, known as PG-9s, with lot number 12-14-451 to the US military. When it purchased the weapons, the US signed an end-use certificate, a document stating that the munitions would be used by US forces and not sold to anyone else. The Romanian government confirmed this sale by providing CAR with the end-user certificate and delivery verification document.

  In 2016, however, Spleeters came across a video made by ISIS that showed a crate of PG-9s, with what appeared to be the lot number 12-14-451, captured from members of Jaysh Suriyah al-­Jadid, a Syrian militia. Somehow, PG-9s from this very same shipment made their way to Iraq, where ISIS technicians separated the stolen warheads from the original rocket motors before adding new features that made them better suited for urban combat...
  ...
  So how exactly did American weapons end up with ISIS? Spleeters can’t yet say for sure. According to a July 19, 2017, report in The Washington Post, the US government secretly trained and armed Syrian rebels from 2013 until mid-2017, at which point the Trump administration discontinued the program—in part over fears that US weapons were ending up in the wrong hands. The US government did not reply to multiple requests for comment on how these weapons wound up in the hands of Syrian rebels or in an ISIS munitions factory. The government also declined to comment on whether the US violated the terms of its end-user certificate and, by extension, failed to comply with the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, of which it is one of 130 signatories.
  ...
  ...CAR has tracked multiple weapons that were bought by Saudi Arabia and later recovered from ISIS fighters. In one instance, Spleeters checked the flight records of an aircraft that was supposed to be carrying 12 tons of munitions to Saudi Arabia. The records show the plane didn’t stop in Saudi Arabia, but it did land in Jordan. Due to its border with Syria, Jordan is a well-known transfer point for arms supplying the rebels fighting the Assad regime, and while the Saudis could claim the weapons had been hijacked or stolen, they don’t: Personnel involved with the flight insist the plane and the weapons landed in Saudi Arabia, flight records notwithstanding. The Saudi government did not reply to requests for comment on how its weapons ended up in ISIS’ hands.
  ...
  The other, and potentially more worrisome, half lies in the blue-collar technicians of ISIS. They have already shown they can produce a nation-state’s worth of weapons, and their manufacturing process will only become easier with the growth of 3-D printing... In this future, weapons schematics can be downloaded from the dark web or simply shared via popular encrypted social media services, like WhatsApp. Those files can then be loaded into 3-D metal printers, machines that have become widely available in the past few years and cost as little as a million dollars to set up, to produce weapons with the push of the button.
  ...
  Spleeters finishes his evidence collection quickly. “Is there more?” he asks the Iraqi army major. “Yes, more,” the major says, and we walk next door, to the next factory. There, in a foyer, stands a tall furnace that ISIS soldiers covered with painted handprints, like a kindergarten art project. The hallways are lined with clay molds to mass-produce the interior forms of 119.5-mm mortars.
  ...
  The sun begins to set. Spleeters asks again if there is more and the major says yes. We have already been to six facilities in just over 24 hours, and I realize that no matter how many times we ask if there is more, the answer will always be the same.

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Interesting=3, Total=3
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:well of course Re:well of course (Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:50PM (1 child)

  by TheGratefulNet (659) on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:50PM (#631467)

  next in the news: isis buys 3d printer from ebay, tries to create bomb but PLA is still stuck to the build plate.

  they launch it anyway.

  it melts into a purple mess.

  (ebay seller gets negative feedback).

  --
  "It is now safe to switch off your computer."

  Parent

  • Re:well of course (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:14PM

    by c0lo (156) on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:14PM (#631476) Journal

    next in the news: isis buys 3d printer from ebay, tries to create bomb but, after 3 days of printing, PLA is still stuck to the build plate.

    FTFY

    The "3d print your weapon/ammo at war-time" is an idiocy - 3d printing is cost effective for prototyping or when the piece to be fab-ed is so complex that any other way of doing it is either impossible (within tolerances) or more expensive than 3d printing.
    It simply doesn't work well for mass production with short production cycles.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    Parent

• Re:well of course (Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:30PM

  by captain normal (2205) on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:30PM (#631636)

  There is a lot more to 3D metal printing than just plugging it in and pushing a button.

  --
  Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--

  Parent