Saturday, January 9, 2010

Kirk: All ‘major’ Taliban leaders are former Gitmo prisoners

Chicago Sun Times
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter

“All of the major leaders of the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan are former Gitmo releasees — All of them,” U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said Thursday.

That is among the things the U.S. Naval Reserve Intelligence officer learned on his holiday deployment to Afghanistan, he told an audience at Chicago’s Union League Club Thursday.

Kirk said NATO Major Gen. Michael T. Flynn told him, “Tell the people back home this: that not only are the people being released from Guantanamo and rejoining Jihad against the United States and our allies in Afghanistan, but the Gitmo detainees are they hardest nut to crack. . . their status as someone who was at Gitmo makes them instant leaders.

“I would urge the administration to stop all further releases from Guantanamo because otherwise they enter our battlespace.”

Kirk’s position as a congressman and a Naval Intelligence officer helps his status as the front-runner in Illinois’ Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate.

Kirk says 61 former Guantanamo prisoners have returned to fighting against U.S. forces.

He says they report to Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, a 2008 Guantanamo releasee who Kirk called “the principal commander killing our forces in the south of Afghanistan.” But an Obama administration official said, “We have been presented with no information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred by this administration have returned to the fight.” But that doesn’t account for those such as Zakir released before this administration took office.

While Kirk was deployed at his then-undisclosed location, one of Kirk’s primary rivals, Andy Martin, released a radio commercial questioning whether the recently-divorced Kirk is gay. Kirk said Thursday that ad was “untrue.”

“It’s ironic that I was there fighting for his rights while he was using his free speech rights to say something that wasn’t true,” Kirk said.

1 comment:

  1. The radio commercial against Rep. Kirk was clearly a dirty trick and rightly has been denounced by the Illinois GOP.

    ReplyDelete

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