Here's the Obama administration's plan for emptying out Guantanamo, as I understand it: Take each prisoner out of his cell. Give him a personal apology, a big kiss and an AK-47. Then hand him a free airline ticket good for any destination in the continental United States.
Maybe I've got one or two details wrong, but I'm having trouble thinking clearly. That's because I've been listening to politicians who have responded to the news of Gitmo's pending closure with disconcerting shrieks of panic.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was beside himself upon hearing Defense Secretary Robert Gates tell a Senate committee that the Pentagon might need to transfer 100 inmates to American soil. "The administration," announced McConnell, "needs to tell the American people how it will keep the terrorists at Guantanamo out of our neighborhoods and off of the battlefield."
How on earth could that be done? Hmmm. Maybe by locking them up in grim buildings replete with iron bars and concertina wire. Same way, in other words, it kept accused terrorists Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri out of our neighborhoods and off the battlefield.