Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 3:41:42 PM
How well does releasing Guantanamo Bay detainees work in keeping our
nation safe? Saudi Arabia provided an answer today by noting that
eleven of the people on its Most Wanted list of terrorists are former Gitmo alumni. All of them passed the Saudi “rehabilitation” process, too
The Saudis want people to know that most of the people who have
completed their rehab process have not gone back to al-Qaeda … at least
not yet. More than ten percent of them have already, though,
and those are just the ones they’ve confirmed. The rest may or may not
return to terrorism, with AQ or another affiliated group.
We have released less than 500 detainees from Gitmo over the last
few years. Sixty-one have returned to terrorism, and that means we
have to expend the same effort all over again to apprehend and detain
them to keep them from killing Americans. That’s a recidivist rate of
over 15% so far, and a burden on our counterterrorist operations that
we simply can’t bear in the long run. If we capture terrorists just to
release them, what’s the point in defending ourselves at all?
These aren’t common criminals returning to a life of burglary.
These terrorists have vowed to kill Americans here and abroad, and will
do so whenever they see an opportunity. Quit playing games with
American security and take the threat seriously.