In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee FBI director Robert S. Mueller III testified that we should not move the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to American jails because the could support terrorism if brought to the U.S.
You'll have to pardon me for not being at the hearing (and C-SPAN for neither broadcasting or webcasting it, it seem Geitner in finance is the only committee hearing being broadcast today), so what I've got is secondhand from MSNBC, but it just disturbs me with a total lack of common sense.
UPDATE: MSNBC has finally posted a video:
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Mueller asserted that if prisoners from Guantanamo Bay were put in American jails that they could radicalize our prison population thus meaning our criminals would want to wage jihad upon release and would cost the FBI time and resources in surveillance and wiretaps.
Okay, I'm just utterly confused by that assertion.
Is the concept of
- Charging these prisoners
- Releasing the ones not charges to their country of origin or an acceptable third nation
- Moving the charged prisoners to a military prison in the United States away from a General Population
- Holding Courts Martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a timely and orderly fashion
- Jailing an convicts in Supermax
- Immediately deporting any acquitted to their country of origin or an acceptable third nation
...really that hard of a concept to wrap our heads around?
What is with this fearmongering line that terrorists will be in our neighborhoods? Due process and following the U.S. Constitution shouldn't mean releasing mass murderers into our streets, but it should be that the people we are holding in our jails for mass murder are, beyond a reasonable doubt, actually mass murderers and not just the neighbor of a mass murderer or someone who flipped off an Afghan warlord.