Muslim Carpet Salesmen will Destroy America from Planck's Constant

Last year our government released a person named Said Ali al-Shihri, who was jailed at Guantanamo for six years after his capture in Pakistan. According to our government, al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after 9/11 to provide money to fighters there; also, as an alleged travel coordinator for al-Qaida, he was also accused of meeting extremists in Mashad, Iran, and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan.

What's al-Shihri's story? He said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Riyadh and denied any links to terrorism. Just your average, ordinary moderate Muslim. So we released him.

What's he doing now? Did he return to his carpet business and his family in Saudia Arabia? Actually, no. Our Arabic friend is now the top deputy in "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula" (1). That's totally amazing: we took an innocent Muslim carpet salesman who had no worldly ambitions other than to sell a few Persian rugs and after six years we trained him enough for him to rise to the top of the terror ranks in less than a year.

Now the cynic among us will probably want to think that perhaps the US was correct all along that he was a terrorist, but that would not be the Liberal idiot way of thinking. Leftists will point to al-Shihri as an example of how we radicalize moderate Muslims into being terrorists. But if that is true that average moderate Muslims can so easily be converted to raving homicidal maniacs then we truly should fear having any Muslims at all in this country.

Either Gitmo has a valid reason for existing and we should leave it alone or we should be deporting all Muslims from America. Anyone who thinks shutting down Guantanamo is a good idea has probably been sold a bill of goods, probably by a carpet salesman.

Notes

(1)

Earthlink News, Released detainee now Yemen al-Qaida commander
A released Guantanamo Bay terror detainee's re-emergence as an al-Qaida commander in Yemen highlights the difficulty President Barack Obama faces in his efforts to close the detention facility and decide the fates of U.S. captives.
A U.S. counterterror official confirmed Friday that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was jailed at Guantanamo for six years after his capture in Pakistan, has resurfaced as a leader of a Yemeni branch of al-Qaida.

"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for," al-Shihri said in a video posted on a militant-leaning Web site Friday. It was the second time this week a reference to al-Shihri has shown up on the Web site. He was mentioned in an online magazine on Jan. 19 with a reference to his prisoner number at Guantanamo, 372.

Al-Shihri was released by the U.S. in 2007 to the Saudi government for rehabilitation. But this week a publication posted on the site said he is now the top deputy in "al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula," a Yemeni offshoot of the terror group headed by Osama bin Laden. The group has been implicated in several attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital Sana.

The second announcement from the site came the day after President Barack Obama signed an executive order directing the closure of the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba within a year.
...
A key question facing Obama's new administration is what to do with the 245 prisoners still confined at Guantanamo. That means finding new detention facilities for hard-core prisoners while trying to determine which detainees are harmless enough to release.

According to the Pentagon, at least 18 former Guantanamo detainees have "returned to the fight" and 43 others are suspected of resuming terrorist activities. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell declined to provide the identity of the former detainees or say what their terrorist activities were.
...
According to Pentagon documents, al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital in Quetta for a month and a half. Within days of leaving the hospital, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo.

Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained in urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, Afghanistan, according to a summary of the evidence against him from U.S. military review panels at Guantanamo Bay.

An alleged travel coordinator for al-Qaida, he was also accused of meeting extremists in Mashad, Iran, and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the Defense Department documents.

Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets for his store in Riyadh. He said he felt bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family in Saudi Arabia.

Disclaimer: The man in the photo above is just a generic, Moroccan carpet seller with, as far as I know, no ties to terror. Nothing in this article applies to him.