It isn't that the Obama administration is stupid, or even crazy for wanting to send more Gitmo detainees to Yemen rather than keep them from plotting against us by holding them.
It's just that they're more concerned about being liked by liberals than they are with doing what's right for American security.
CNN reports:
John Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that the failed Christmas Day terror attack on a U.S. airliner doesn't change the plan to close the Guantanamo facility.On Saturday, Obama linked the airline bombing suspect to an al Qaeda affiliate based in Yemen.
Brennan called the failed attack on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan a "unique incident" that won't affect the process of closing the Guantanamo facility.
"We are making sure that we don't do anything that's going to put Americans at risk," Brennan said.
About half of the roughly 200 detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay would be prosecuted in the United States by federal courts or military tribunals. Some would be sent to third countries, including Yemenis returned to their home nation, Brennan said.
The United States is working with the Yemeni government to make sure "the situation on the ground is taken into account," Brennan said.
"We're going to do this the right way at the right time," he said.
The "right way" would be to put about 5,000 miles between the terrorists and Yemen. Send them to the North Pole. But Yemen?
Brennan remarked that it is necessary to close Gitmo because it has become a "rallying cry" for terrorist recruitment. Funny we never see any evidence of that - ever. It was an assessment by the CIA whose track record is abysmal in identifying and analyzing the motives of our enemy. Instead, it has been a liberal talking point rather than a provable assumption.
Most congressional Republicans oppose closing the Guantanamo facility, and some Democrats and independents said Sunday that no detainees should be sent to Yemen due to the terrorist network operating there.
"It would be irresponsible to take any of the Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo and send them back to Yemen," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who belongs to the Democratic caucus, said on the ABC program "This Week."
Not stupidity. Just unalloyed hubris.
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