Say It Ain't So

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Thomas Joscelyn reports that a former Gitmo detainee, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, has become the Taliban's chief operations officer in southern Afghanistan, where violence has been spiking in the last year. In response to that spike, thousands of U.S. troops are preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Their task will be all the more dangerous because, according to The Times (UK), Rasoul is "responsible for increasingly sophisticated explosives attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan." As a detainee, Rasoul went before a military tribunal. He presented the familiar litany of ridiculous defenses. Though captured in the car of a Taliban leader while holding a gun, he claimed he was forced to carry the gun. Rasoul reportedly also possessed two Casio watches similar to those used in al-Qaida bombings. He claimed he was holding the watches for a Taliban member who lacked pockets. Rasoul also said he was the victim of unscrupulous bounty hunters.