January 8, 2010
Obama administration officials say a classified Pentagon report concludes that of 560 detainees transferred from the prison at Guantanamo bay to other countries, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorist or militant activity.
And my response to that is, "Well, duh." These people were not innocents picked up in a dragnet while milking cows or tending sheep. They were picked up in areas of known terrorist activity.
In 2007, one in seven of the released detainees were estimated to have returned to terrorism. Now it's one in five.
The new finding comes amid reports that one former Gitmo detainee released in 2007 under the bush administration is now involved with a branch of al Qaeda in Yemen. But that was an exception. President Obama has tried to make it his policy to release all detainees. He suspended the return of about 90 of them to Yemen after the attempted destruction of that plane on Christmas day by a man who got his training in Yemen.
Have we forgotten how or why we are fighting this war?
Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.
