NEOAVATARA

If ONLY they were all this innocent...

Reports from Congress are that the White House has stated that some prisoners from Guantanamo Bay will be released into the U.S., likely the Northern Virginia suburbs.

The Obama administration is preparing to admit into the United States as many as seven Chinese Muslims, from a group called the Uighurs,  who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in the first release of any of the detainees into this country, according to current and former U.S. officials.

This will likely face severe opposition on multiple fronts. I am sure those in Fairfax County, Virginia will be excited.  Republicans are ready to pounce.  Heck, even the Red Chinese are angry, because they consider the Uighurs terrorists as well.

“The question remains, as it does with all detainees held at Guantanamo: does their release make America safer?” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked in response to media reports.  “Surely the administration will not release these terrorist-trained detainees onto the streets of a US community before providing to Congress the legal rationale for doing so, and a guarantee of safety for American citizens,” said McConnell.

The Uighurs are primarily from the northwestern steppes of China in a region officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region but known to Uighurs as Turkestan. Beijing, which controls the area, has been criticized by Washington and others for repressing Uighur religious rights and freedoms.   The Uighurs were sent to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Pakistan. Before that, they had gravitated to Afghanistan, where they received firearms training at a camp apparently run by a Uighur separatist.  Some former U.S. officials have said government information indicates that the Uighurs may pose a danger if released. But other officials and human rights organizations insist they pose no threat to Americans.

Andy McCarthy led the 1995 prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, is an expert on the issue.  His thoughts?

Despite being steeped in jihadist ideology, trained in explosives and assassination tactics, and anxious enough to get that way that they high-tailed it from China to Afghanistan to become more lethal terrorists, the Uighur Muslim detainees will be released by the Obama administration into the United States, according to this Los Angeles Times report. After all, the president has promised to close Guantanamo Bay this year, and that promise can’t be fulfilled unless we release the jihadists since many of them can’t be tried.

Not exactly an enthusiastic supporter for their release.

And you don’t think politics is involved?  What about this:

White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S., according to Pentagon sources familiar with the action.  Reviewing the Uighurs detention, the inter-agency panel found that they weren’t the ignorant, innocent goatherds the White House believed them to be.  The committee determined they were too dangerous to release because they were members of the ETIM terrorist group, the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” and because their presence at the al-Queda training camp was no accident.  There is now no ETIM terrorist cell in the United States:  there will be one if these Uighurs are released into the United States.

Now, interesting news.  The Obama Administration apparently has cleared the way for military tribunals to restart at Gitmo.  Basically, they realized the same thing the Bush Administration did; you may want to try them in the United States, but it is not practical.  What the Obama Administration is starting to realize..ideology is one thing, and governing is something else.

Lovely.  Next up?  Montana, where there are rumors that the rest of the Gitmo prisoners may be transferred.  We will see if the Democratic Governor there is in favor of that.  Hope the terrorists like snow.

Senate Republicans are finally fighting back, on what is likely to be an Achilles heel for the White House…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRmBsvWgdbE

So, is our President more concerned with the safety of Americans, or some adherence to liberal ideology?