Fox News on-line this morning reports that, “The Obama administration's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison has hit a new stumbling block with some detainees now fighting the administration's push to have them repatriated."
Apparently, two Algerian citizens held there “fear that Islamist recruiters may harm them if they discover they don't share the extremists' commitment to terror, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.”
The article then quotes Robert Kirsch, a lawyer for one of the detainees, who told the newspaper the administration's planned repatriation is "the most callous, political abuse of these men," one of whom was arrested in 2001 in connection with an alleged plot to blow up American and British embassies in Bosnia.
The administration’s push to close the facility stems from 2009, when “on the second day of his presidency, Obama ordered the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be closed within one year. Obama long has derided the facility, where critics say detainees have been abused, interrogated and held illegally, as a blow to American values and credibility worldwide.”
Reading the story just now stirred a memory of my entry for November 18, which included the following details, “Purely from an economic point of view, the administration says Guantanamo is too costly. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress that annual spending on Guantanamo was $454 million — or about $2.7 million per detainee.”
Now, while certainly have no first-hand knowledge of what goes on in Guantanamo Bay, I can still recall stories of how the current administration's gone overboard in attempts to make up for prisoner mistreatment under “W” Bush. Which leads me to believe that if I was a detainee with almost $3 million bucks a year being spent on me and my welfare, I doubt I'd want to leave either.
In fact, if I had that much money coming my way annually, I might even able to afford health care this year.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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