Second look at Gitmo?

posted at 6:10 pm on April 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama promised to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay as soon as he took office for almost two years on the campaign trail, and he made that one of his first actions when he assumed office.  Now, suddenly, Obama has discovered what we all knew the entire time — that closing Gitmo means sending terrorists back to countries that won’t secure them, especially Yemen.  Now they don’t have a Plan B for some of the worst of the worst:

The Obama administration’s effort to return the largest group of Guantánamo detainees to Yemen, their home country, has stalled, creating a major new hurdle for the president’s plan to close the prison camp in Cuba by next January, American and Yemeni officials say.

“We’re at a complete impasse,” said one American official who is involved in the issue, speaking without authorization. “I don’t know that there’s a viable ‘Plan B.’ ”

The Yemeni government has asked Washington to return its detainees and has said it would need substantial aid to rehabilitate the men. But the Obama administration is increasingly skeptical of Yemen’s ability to provide adequate rehabilitation and security to supervise returned prisoners. In addition, American officials are wary of sending detainees to Yemen because of growing indications of Al Qaeda activity there.

In other words, Yemen wants us to pay them for the privilege of releasing the Gitmo detainees into their custody, and in return, they won’t even promise to keep an eye on them.  Yemen has already proven itself a revolving door for al-Qaeda terrorists released into their custody.  Now they want us to pay for the grease on the wheels, and all so that we can let the Gitmo Yemenis get back to the business of plotting to kill Americans.

In fact, they want $100 million, which is perhaps not coincidentally the same amount of money Obama asked his cabinet to find in savings this week.  What a bargain!  We can release terrorists so that they can try killing more of us, and pay $100 million for that privilege.

But at least the world would love us.  They’d be laughing at us, but they’d love the gallows humor.

How many Yemenis remain at Gitmo?  Not just one or two or ten, but 97 Yemenis.  That’s about 40% of the inmates at Gitmo.  No one else in their right mind would take them, certainly not without some sort of payoff, and they’re the last people we want to bring inside the US.

Now, the Obama administration admits they have no Plan B.  No wonder; it took Obama more than two years to discover what most of us had been screaming at the top of our lungs about Yemen and the terrorists.  It will take at least that long for a viable Plan B to occur to them — which would to just keep Gitmo open and conduct the military tribunals that Congress authorized twice.

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