About those detainees down at Gitmo

Let me reiterate our direct and open opposition to closing down the detention facility at Gitmo. This is an astoundingly inept mistake, even for Barry. He is obviously not listening to his military advisers on this issue, but he is content to listen to the extreme fringe fever-swamp of his party. However I was rather taken aback by this from Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard's blog. It appears that not only will we be freeing them into the United States, but we're going to be giving them welfare of sorts when they get here:

During his news conference, Blair also said the Obama administration is still wrestling with what to do with the remaining 240 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the president has ordered closed.

Some of the detainees, deemed non-threatening, may be released into the United States as free men, Blair confirmed.

That would happen when they can't be returned to their home countries, because the governments either won't take them or the U.S. fears they will be abused or tortured. That is the case with 17 Uighurs (WEE'-gurz), Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared for release from the jail long ago. The U.S. can't find a country willing to take them, and it will not turn them over to China.

Blair said the former prisoners would have [to] get some sort of assistance to start their new lives in the United States.

“We can't put them out on the street,” he said.

We find the idea not only appalling but dangerous as well. We know there are sleeper cells in the United States that had been under surveillance for eight years, and we're pretty sure they still are. The last thing we need to be doing is allowing these so-called non-threatening detainees reach our shore, and hook up with some like-minded cronies. But Mr. Joscelyn explains this much better:

(1) Does this mean that the Obama administration is planning on giving some freed Guantanamo detainees a stipend? It sure appears that way. So, not only is the Obama administration planning on freeing some detainees on U.S. soil, it is also going to pay them to live here. Amazing. Who would have thought that we would see the day when detainees who were once labeled enemy combatants would be receiving welfare?

(2) The Uighur detainees are cited, over and over again, as the types of detainees who can be safely released into the U.S. This conclusion has been reached through a combination of specious reasoning and ignorance.

None of the 17 Uighurs are master terrorists on par with the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were mostly new recruits at the time of their capture. However, as I have argued before, they are all affiliated with and/or members of a designated terrorist organization, received training at a training camp in the al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold of Tora Bora, and have admitted that they were trained by two known terrorists. And, on top of that, the group that trained them threatened to attack the Olympic Games in China last year.

Even if you don’t think that we should lock them up and throw away the key, do we really want to pay them to live on U.S. soil?

(3) The AP says the United States can’t find a country to take the Uighurs, other than China, which may treat them harshly. But that really remains to be seen. Ireland, for example, has apparently offered to take some Guantanamo detainees. Other European nations have been somewhat more reticent.

(4) Is the Obama administration considering paying other Guantanamo detainees to live in the U.S. as well?

This move by Barry is both stupid and foolish. And frankly we could care less what their home countries do to them. Ship them back to their countries, and be done with it. Let them determine guilt or innocence seeing as how the current administration is doing it's best to hamstring the tribunals. It's clear to us that this administration cares more about treating these animals nicely than protecting this nation.

We've already seen that this administration cares little about wanting to keep us safe. The recent dispatch of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, with no clear-cut orders, will guarantee more bodies coming home from that hellhole. He is closing down Gitmo, and there are those in Congress who want to prosecute the former administration of war crimes DESPITE the fact that many in congress knew what we being done, and didn't believe the Bush administration was harsh enough on the detainees.

But we have a new sheriff in town, and he happens to be the shakiest gun in the west.

Publius II