BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
NORTON META TAG
19 September 2014
"Three of five detainees swapped (for Bowe Bergdahl) are now ISIS leaders." 15SEP14
WHILE the website this is from has a proven track record of spreading lies and misinformation many racist repiglicans and tea-baggers will continue to spread it around the internet. From +PolitiFact .....
By Louis Jacobson on Thursday, September 18th, 2014 at 2:01 p.m.
This is a
screenshot of a portion of a movie-trailer-style video reportedly
released by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
A reader recently sent us a link to a rather startling claim
-- that three of the five Guantanamo detainees released by the United
States in late May in exchange for Taliban prisoner Bowe Bergdahl have
now taken up arms for the Islamic State.
That’s the militant group sometimes known as ISIS or ISIL that has
taken control of portions of Iraq and Syria and has beheaded two
American journalists and at least one other Westerner.
The claim stems from a website,
politicalears.com, that ran a post on Sept. 15, 2014, with the
headline, "Three of five detainees swapped are now ISIS leaders." The
post, which was also linked to elsewhere on the Internet, goes on to
say: "It is being reported that at least 3 of the 5 detainees involved
in the swap have joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq as commanders and are
using that rank to usher in an 'Islamic Caliphate' (a Sunni Islamic
Theocracy -- contrary to Obama's claims that ISIS is not Islamic). "The 'Taliban 5' who were transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
to custody in Doha, Qatar, are Mohammad Fazl, Khairullah Khairkhwa,
Abdul Haq Wasiq, Norullah Noori, and Mohammad Nabi Omari. They have
largely disappeared from view since they were dropped off in Doha, but
eyewitnesses place Fazi, Wasiq, and Noori in Iraq and Syria fighting
with ISIS."
If true, this would be a major story. But it’s not.
President Barack Obama took significant heat at the time for releasing the five detainees, with some critics also taking issue with the ex-detainees’ new terms of custody
-- being transferred to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar with
restrictions on their political behavior but relative freedom of
movement within the country.
We didn’t find any news reports about what the ex-detainees have been
up to recently, but we quickly noticed a couple of red flags that made
us suspicious of the email’s claims. For starters, the claim in
politicalears.com is entirely unsourced.
In addition, we’d run into politicalears.com before and found the
site less than credible. Earlier this month, we looked at its claim that
"over 73 percent of all donations raised" from the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge "are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and
external donations." We gave it a Pants on Fire.
Experts who study the region told us the claim was wrong. The
ex-detainees "are all in Qatar. This is nonsense," said Barnett R.
Rubin, director and senior fellow at New York University’s Center on
International Cooperation.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, said that while he doesn’t doubt that the
ex-detainees are dangerous to United States interests, "there is literally zero evidence" that the detainees have been spotted on the battlefield with ISIS.
Gartenstein-Ross added that the claim doesn’t even make much logical
sense and betrays the author’s weak grasp on the region’s nuances.
"The ex-detainees "were in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater,"
Gartenstein-Ross said. "Based on these guys’ social networks and who
their points of contact were, it’s pretty unlikely they’d be able to
quickly find a way to the battlefield and have a command" in the
Iraq-Syria border region.
"They are not native Arabic speakers, and it would be unfamiliar
terrain culturally. They would face a lot of obstacles," he said.
When we asked the White House if there was any evidence that one or
more detainees has joined ISIS, spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, "There
is no truth to these reports." Our ruling
Bloggers said that "three of five detainees swapped (for Bowe
Bergdahl) are now ISIS leaders." The claim has nonexistent sourcing, has
been published by sites with questionable track records for accuracy,
and has been knocked down by independent experts. We rate it Pants on
Fire.
