| An Nahar notices another bit of that Yahoo interview posted here. |
We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us...
has vowed to push ahead with plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, despite evidence that a substantial number of former detainees have returned to the battlefield.
In an interview with Yahoo News that was published Monday, Obama said the strategic benefits of closing the notorious facility outweighed incidents of recidivism among "low-level" former inmates.
The White House itself admits that around 10 percent of those released from Guantanamo have resumed fighting for Islamic Lion of Islam organizations, but says it is more important to shutter a facility that has become a recruiting tool for myrmidons.
Obama's comments come as Sudanese myrmidon Ibrahim al-Qosi -- who was released in 2012 -- seemingly appeared in a recent video by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
...the latest incarnation of various Qaeda and Qaeda-allied groups, including the now-defunct Aden-Abyan Islamic Army that boomed the USS Cole in 2000...
"The judgment that we're continually making is, are there individuals who are significantly more dangerous than the people who are already out there who are fighting?" Obama said.
"What do they add? Do they have special skills? Do they have special knowledge that ends up making a significant threat to the United States?"
"And so the bottom line is that the strategic gains we make by closing Guantanamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals who, you know, have been released so far."
| Interesting that Yahoo's editors chose to transcribe one of those little verbal ticks that make the speaker sound less than highly intelligent. |
Obama came to office in 2009 vowing to shutter the facility, which opened under his predecessor George W. Bush to hold terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks and became known for harsh interrogation techniques that some have said were tantamount to torture.
Obama is soon expected to put forward a new plan that would speed the release of inmates and transfer the most dangerous ones to U.S. soil.
The plan is likely to accelerate the release of low-level detainees to foreign countries and move the most dangerous prisoners to a specialized facility in the United States.
Because of a congressional ban on funding US transfers, Obama has suggested he may have to resort to an executive order to close the prison. This would ignite a political and legal firestorm.