Some of the 17 Chinese Uighur Muslims being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will likely be released in the U.S. in an effort to convince other countries to accept prisoners from the detention facility, according to current and former American officials.
The fate of the Chinese nationals, who were captured after the Sept. 11 attacks, has been a quandary for U.S. officials. While the Bush administration cleared the Uighurs for release or transfer between 2003 and 2008, the government hasn't been able to find a country willing to accept them.
Their release would give fresh fuel to lawmakers who have objected to the possibility raised by the Obama administration of sending terror suspects housed at Guantanamo to U.S. prisons. President Barack Obama promised to close the detention facility by January and needs to relocate the prisoners. The State Department has had trouble persuading other countries to accept the roughly 240 detainees, including the Uighurs, whose lawyers say they would be persecuted if returned to China.
Um...wait a second. I thought that the whole reason they needed to be shipped out of Gitmo was because they were being tortured! If so, then what's the big deal about a bit of 'persecution'? Surely torture is worse, right? Unless there really isn't any Gitmo torture, this should not be a problem, right? Hmmm...
"It's a virtual certainty that the Obama administration will announce at some point that some small number of Uighurs will be settled in the United States," said John B. Bellinger III, a State Department legal adviser during the Bush administration who is now a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington. "It's going to be impossible to get European counties to agree to resettle any detainees unless we take some."
Oh, boy. This has already been discussed here, and is one of the absolute worst ideas in an administration that has yet to find a single good one. They're now re-committing to the plan to not only release these radical Islamic terrorists, but also to use taxpayer money to fund their free lifestyles! Words fail. If you can't figure out all the things that are wrong with this idea, you've been sucking down the Kool-Aid and are truly lost from the land of intelligent thought. And what if we release a few here but no European country steps up to the plate for the rest of them? What then? Release all of them here so we end up taking the full hit? This is stupidity enshrined in naivete.
The U.S. has convened a multiagency task force to review each of the Guantanamo detainees to determine whether they should be released, tried in court or held indefinitely. The Justice Department, which is leading the review, won't comment on where the Uighurs may be released, said spokesman Dean Boyd.
What does this mean? Are they going to sneak these terrorists out in the middle of the night and air-drop them in the middle of some small Midwestern town? Why the secrecy? If these people pose no danger to Americans, then why don't we see a bunch of people lining up to welcome them into their own communities? Even the most hardcore liberals understand on a fundamental level that these people are dangerous and should never be released...they just think someone else should take 'em. At least someone in Congress has some sanity:
Representative Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, raised objections with the administration about the plan and sent Obama a letter on May 1, saying he understood that a decision on the release of "a number" of Uighurs into the U.S. was imminent.
Wolf wrote that he has "grave concerns about this action, which I believe could directly threaten the security of the American people." To determine whether the Uighurs pose a threat, Wolf said he wants classified U.S. records made public.
"Who are they? Where were they arrested?" Wolf said in an interview. "We want to know everything. What are they afraid of letting out?"
Bingo.
Here's the part that bothers me the most.
The Justice Department filed a response last week saying the Uighurs are free to go to any country that will accept them. The U.S. is "engaged in extensive and high-level efforts to arrange their resettlement in other countries," the department said in its response. The filing said the decision about whether to move them to the U.S. rests with the government, not the courts.
Lawyers for the Uighurs said their clients don't represent a threat, and they are pushing for their release in the U.S.
Eric Tirschwell, an attorney with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP in New York who represents four Uighurs, said his clients have been unfairly characterized as terrorists.
"We hope that all 17 of the Uighurs will be released quickly and continue to believe the United States must accept at least some of them before other countries will be prepared to do the same," Tirschwell said in an interview.
Clearly, there is a very strong desire to set them free here and give them a life of luxury, presumably in the hopes that such kindness will be repaid with good behavior. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you have the understanding that this presumption is absolute folly, and is in reality an invitation to more American deaths. But, given that the Obama administration and the radical Left has at least another 18 months of power virtually unchecked, I'm not sure how anyone can stop them from doing it.
The really disturbing part is that this same attitude is on full display from Barack Obama not only on terrorists on the ground, but also on nuclear weapons, the missile defense shield, and just about every other aspect of national security. I believe that the only thing holding him back at this point is the political reality that he'll be held responsible for any deaths that occur at the hands of these people or situations. If he gets to the point where he thinks he can pin the blame on Bush, conservatives, or anyone else, I think he'll do it.
I mean it when I say that the greatest danger to America today is our own President.
There's my two cents.
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