Opponents of closing Gitmo and moving terrorists into U.S. prisons argue the relocation could make the host communities an attractive target for the radicalized brethren of the incarcerated.
Supporters of President Obama’s plan assure us there’s nothing really to worry about, because the folks held at Gitmo are just docile victims of President Bush’s war on terror.
Victims like Ibrahim al-Qosi, whom Obama set free in 2012 so that he could return to his native Sudan to resume his career as a chef.
No word yet on whether we also paid him unemployment benefits until he could find a new job, seeing as how we killed his last boss, Osama bin Laden. But if we did, those checks need to be cut off pronto because a new video has surfaced featuring al-Qosi as the senior leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In the video released by the group called “Guardians of Sharia,” al-Qosi encourages acts of “individual jihad” against the United States and other western nations. He and other leaders in the video also cheer attacks by small terror cells on the West and encourage jihadists to follow recognized terror ideologues, perhaps in reference to the Islamic State.
Senators from the three states under threat of Obama’s Gitmo restructuring, including Colorado’s own Cory Gardner, criticized the president Thursday for the prisoner release and his continued plans to shut down the terrorist prison in Cuba.
“The President’s rush to empty the cells at Guantanamo recklessly endangers our national interests abroad and our safety here at home,” Gardner said. “This news confirms what we’ve known all along: Guantanamo Bay houses some of the world’s deadliest terrorists, and the secure facility at Guantanamo is exactly where they belong. They do not belong back on the battlefield fighting against us, nor do they belong on U.S. soil.”
Gardner is right. The recent attack in San Bernardino and Paris serve as a stark reminder that we are at war with radical Islamists. We don’t need to encourage more attacks on our soil by disbanding a military prison overseas and putting terrorists in U.S. jails.