Gitmo's Ghosts

Gitmo's Ghosts
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, January 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT

War on Terror: A Gitmo detainee released at Saudi Arabia's request has re-upped with al-Qaida and is now its chief of operations in Yemen. So, again, why do we want to empty the place?


If we bounce the rest of these terrorists out of Gitmo, as the president wants to do within a year, we risk recycling even more dangerous fanatics back into the jihad against us.

These people like to commit suicide. Why are we so anxious to do the same?

Gitmo terrorist Said Ali al-Shihri was released to Saudi in 2007. Within no time, he was back on the terror circuit. In fact, the FBI now suspects he helped plan last year's deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital.

He's one of at least 30 former Gitmo inmates who have resumed terrorist activities as part of the Taliban or al-Qaida, despite signing pledges to renounce violence. (Yes, we're really that dumb.)

The releases have come amid a steady stream of complaints from the media, the ACLU and the Saudis (who have a disproportionate number locked up there) about the treatment of the detainees, who are tortured daily with a limited menu of halal meals, paperback-only copies of the Quran and hard plastic soccer balls.

The Saudis assured us we could trust these hardened killers in their care, because they had a rehab program to turn them into nonviolent, productive members of society.

But the Saudi "reintegration program" for repatriated Gitmo terrorists conditions their release on an agreement not to attack the Kingdom. It's OK, however, for them to attack the West.

And that's exactly what al-Shihri did — after he went through the Saudi rehab program, which includes monthly stipends, cars, jobs and resortlike housing featuring pools and volleyball courts.

Sounds more like a resort: If we didn't know better, our ally is actually rewarding our enemies, and rehabbing them for future battle.

Many of the remaining 245-plus Gitmo detainees are Saudis and Yemenis. But fear not, Yemen also has a rehab program for terrorists that's similar to the Saudis. And one that's partly funded by the U.S. (as if these rich oil countries swimming in petro dollars can't finance their own anti-terror programs).

Yemen is the same government that secretly released a USS Cole bombing suspect not too long ago. "The lesson here is, whoever receives former Guantanamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them," a U.S. official was quoted saying.

That clearly is not going to happen. We can't even trust ally Kuwait, which recently freed a Gitmo terrorist we'd released to its custody only to watch him attack innocents in Iraq. Not long after renouncing jihad, Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi turned around and blew up a police station there in a suicide mission.

The real lesson is: Don't release these killers into anyone's care. Keep them locked up in Cuba or they'll just resurface with al-Qaida or the Taliban and attack us again.

Some argue that there's a new commander in chief now, and new rules in the war on terror. So deal with it.

While it is his prerogative to change the rules, the enemy is operating under old rules — 1,400-year-old rules, to be exact — and it's not changing its tactics. And it would like nothing better than to have 245 more of its battle-hardened dogs return to the front line.

If the new commander in chief is not careful, Gitmo's ghosts may come back to haunt us all.



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