Elected officials on both sides are saying they do not want the scary terrorists in their backyard:
"Americans don't want some of the most dangerous men alive coming here or released overseas where they can return to the fight, as many other detainees who have been released from Guantanamo already have," said Senator McConnell.
From Politico:
Reid said that closing Guantanamo was the right decision but "We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States." Asked next, if he could see a day when Guantanamo detainees might be transferred to prisons on American soil, Reid refused to clarify his remarks. "We don’t want them around," he said.
The terrorists have us right where they want us--terrified.
What does this say to the terrorists who attacked us, when the leaders of America's political system vent publicly about how these alleged terrorists are so frightening and apparently so superior to us that we are incapable of containing them effectively in a maximum security prison on American soil? It says "We are afraid of you. You are stronger than we are."
John Stewart showed one republican senator saying the terrorists could not be sent to Leavenworth because then they would be "close" to army officers in training. Do these terrorists ooze some sort of deadly toxic substance from their skin that disperses in the air and is fatal to anyone who inhales it? Are our army officers so pathetic they cannot be within 50 feet of alleged terrorists? That does not give me much confidence about their ability to fight the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
I am embarrassed that my political representatives so freely admit their cowardice. It sort of makes the whole post-9/11 bravado of "We will find you...We will hunt you down and we will kill you" laughable. So John McCain is going to chase Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell but he is too afraid to transport bin Laden's shackled, unarmed minions through the gates of our toughest prisons, where they will be kept locked up, under armed guard? Thank God for those brave French, willing to take a few of these demonic terrorists off our hands!
If the argument is that holding them within a US prison makes that facility an attractive target for "free" terrorists, isn't it fair to say that Homeland Security has identified several terrorist targets on US soil already? It is not as though the terrorists leave us alone because they simply cannot find something good to target and this is all they need to move forward with their plans.
These "terrorists" are just men, some of whom chose to pursue a path of hatred. Some are just confused. Some were incarcerated as teenagers. We really enhance their self-image and magnify their importance when we treat them as something above and beyond ordinary men--"great satans" so frightening, we are incapable of dealing with them.
I really don't know how Israel manages, that tiny country holding all those alleged Palestinian terrorists in their jails. They must be much braver than we are.
