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Could it be that terrorist art therapy rehab summer camp doesn’t work?

Pantybomber terrorist has Gitmo alumni friends. Who’d have thunk it?

Two al Qaeda Leaders Behind Northwest Flight 253 Terror Plot Were Released by U.S.
Former Guantanamo Prisoners Believed Behind Northwest Airlines Bomb Plot; Sent to Saudi Arabia in 2007

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

I guess those crayons and coloring books weren’t enough:

One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen.

Looks like the Saudis forgot to try graham crackers and a nap, for the full kindergarten experience.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.

Both Saudi nationals have since emerged in leadership roles in Yemen, according to U.S. officials and the men’s own statements on al Qaeda propaganda tapes.

Gitmo alumni hardcore terrorists, relased to Saudi Arabia, find their way to Yemen and resume leadership positions with al-Qaeda.

I’m shocked! shocked!

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Comments

  1. Before discrediting the validity of art therapy as a particular modality in rehabilitating terrorists, I think your post needs to consider that ANY therapy is unlikely to wipe out years of indoctrination. Treating terrorism as a psychiatric problem is a relatively new phenomenon – can your blog offer evidence based therapies that are effective in the rehabilitation of terrorists as a counter point to this one that you hypothesize as ineffective? There is no diagnosis in the DSM specifically for the psychological problems that accompany terrorism, can the psychological community as a whole (including art therapists) be sure that it is something that can be “treated” or “cured” with therapy? Art Therapy has been effective in treating IRAQ war veterans with PTSD:http://www.arttherapy-co.org/ataco/documents/whatis/AATA%20-%20Art%20Therapy%20Shows%20Promise%20with%20Posttraumatic%20Stress%20Disorder.pdf – but is PTSD for a veteran the same thing as what a terrorist in Rehab experiences? Before posting irreverent comments on the validity of a particular therapeutic modality and contributing to the stigma against mental illness, I would hope your blog would more thoughtfully examine the issue at hand.

  3. The word rehabilitation assumes that there was some initial point of strength or goodness. I don’t think we have too many terrorists who meet that requirement. Second, if you assume that these terrorist scum were at one point human but turned into monsters, turning them back into men is impossible unless they want to be men again.

    Terrorist therapy – good luck with that.

  4. Erin, I don’t doubt that, in the hands of competent professionals working with motivated patients and in conjunction with other modalities over a long period of time, art therapy is beneficial.

    However, assuming that terrorists released from Gitmo and sent to Saudi Arabia – which funds Wahhabists – were receiving the appropriate therapies for a few weeks and then had a complete recovery, is naive, particularly when those terrorists then leave Saudi Arabia and go to join al-Qaeda in Yemen.

  5. The gross naivity demontrated by Ms. Brumleve about the true nature of Islam is shocking but perhaps it explains why Major Hasan was allowed to fester until its awful conclusion. More frighteningly, it demonstrates how utterly clueless US leadership is about Islam. Ms. Brumleve, you do realize, don’t you, that the ideology of Jihadism is scarcely different from the ideology of Islam, whether it comes in the form of Saudi Wahabbism or Pakistani Deobandism?

    You advocate using art therapy as way to de-indoctrinate Jihadists. To what? Mainstream Islam? Islam in its proper interpetation and as practiced from Morocco to Malaysia is scarcely different from fascism with its demands for institutionalized discrimination and hatred of the ‘other’ e.g. non-muslims, women, homosexuals, et al. Applying art therapy on jihadists is as silly and ineffective as sending members of the KKK to Nazi era Germany for rehabilitative art therapy.

    It is the ideology which should addressed and dealt with.

  6. Well, I guess YOU’VE BEEN TOLD, you brazen hussy! Especially the part about “posting irreverent comments.”

    Irreverent comments again! This is how it starts. First – you exhibit less than the required intensity of adoration for Obama. Now? I’m being irreverent toward Erin Brumleve MA, LPC, ATR.

    Oh where will it all end?

    And I can tell you one other thing, you irreverent blogger (why ELSE would anybody do this?): when they were doing the crayons and fingerpaints (can you just see hardened, lethal terrorists chasing each other around the room with fingertips loaded with paint?) they left out THE crucial element: those little rugs you take naps on. Lacking those all effort is wasted and possibly even counterproductive.