Saturday, January 24, 2009

Gitmo Reoffenders

So, a few days before Obama took office, the Pentagon released some numbers about Guantanamo inmates returning to terrorist activities after being released. Obama had publicly pledged throughout the campaign that he would close Guantanamo, and so the release of these numbers seemed timed to make the closure a more difficult proposition for Obama. There are a number of weird things about this - namely, that Obama had nothing to do with the released prisoners, since they were released under the Bush administration, and anyway, Obama isn't simply planning to let everyone go. The plan is just to close Guantanamo, end torture, extradite where possible, and pursue any prosecution in an above-board manner.

But now it's sounding like the numbers in the Pentagon report may not even be valid. To give one example, they consider a released inmate to be "suspected of returning to terrorist activities" if the said person has made anti-American comments since release. That's pretty weak. And if we've got the Pentagon deliberately fudging numbers in order to sabotage Obama, that's a big deal.

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