Jamie Weinstein

This week, the Obama Administration announced plans to move roughly 100 terrorists currently held at the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo) to a prison in Thomson, Illinois, just a couple hours drive outside of Chicago.   

Emeril would be horrified.

I know what you are thinking: “Finally! The Obama Administration is moving to shut down the moral cancer that is Gitmo.” 

It was just this last February, after all, that Barack Obama’s Defense Department published a review of Gitmo. Gitmo has long been a target of the Left for the alleged horrors that occur there. And the D.O.D. report did not whitewash any of the terrible terrors that routinely continue to take place.

Get ready to be morally sickened by what our government is doing to terrorist detainees at Gitmo in our name. The report indicated that during more than one inspection—brace yourself—“a small number of meals delivered to detainees in Camps 5 and Echo . . . were approximately five degrees under the optimal standard.” 

What hell hath we wrought? Could Amnesty International have been right? Is Gitmo really the “gulag of our time,” after all? 

I know what you just read may lead you to conclude so, but I ask you to reconsider. While I readily concede that the aforementioned culinary catastrophe unquestionably merits the loss of at least one of Gitmo’s three Michelin Stars, I am not sure it exactly necessitates shutting the place down. But that is exactly what Barack Obama is intent on doing, even if he won’t be able to do it within the year timeframe he announced upon assuming office. 

In this new Illinois prison facility, we are told the 100 or so  terrorist detainees will be separated from the rest of the general prison population. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has assured Americans that the facility will be the most impenetrable prison in these United States. 

He may be right. Unlike some critics, I don’t necessarily fear that these terrorists will escape and threaten American citizens. It is conceivable that the facility could be become a terrorist target as some suggest, but that too is probably not a terribly significant threat. I think there is much more to fear that the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammad becomes a prime target for Islamist killers.   

Nonetheless, the risk of all these concerns is certainly higher than they would be if the terrorists were left at Gitmo. And who knows what new legal claims creative lawyers in the United States could bring up when these detainees reach American soil.   

But the real question is why is it necessary to spend loads of money to move the detainees from Gitmo in the first place? Why go through all the hassle and expense? Even if it is not likely that the terrorists will escape, why unnecessarily create the risk at all? 

The answer, of course, is because those on the Left have created this image of Gitmo as some sadistic torture chamber. This image has spread all around the world without sufficient pushback. Now, we are told, the legend of Gitmo is a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Count me as someone who questions whether many Al Qaeda terrorists joined the nefarious cause because of the existence of Gitmo.

Gitmo, of course, is nothing like what is imagined in the deep, dark fantasies of those on the Left. Indeed, as Barack Obama’s Defense Department noted last February, “the chain of command responsible for the detention mission at Guantanamo consistently seeks to go beyond a minimalist approach to compliance with Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Convention], and endeavors to enhance conditions in a manner as humane as possible consistent with security concerns.” 

Prisoners are given three hot halal meals a day and can choose from as many as six menu options (regular, high fiber, vegetarian, vegetarian with fish, bland, and soft food). Their religious observance is respected and they are provided with a Koran in the language of their choice. Prisoners who didn’t like the pillow provided at Gitmo were provided another type more to their liking. Some detainees were even given money to buy snacks at a canteen. It goes on and on. 

In many ways, Gitmo detainees live better than many in neighboring Cuba. It certainly sounds like they eat much better. Which again, begs the question, why is this place being shut down? Why are we going through the expense of moving these people? Why is Obama wasting his political capital on this nonsense? 

There is no compelling answer.  The Obama Administration is simply trying to placate its leftist base. In order to justify the decision to move the detainees to Illinois, which is deeply unpopular in the state for obvious reasons, the Obama Administration is touting that the Thomson prison facility will create many new high quality jobs in a town that has been ravaged by the recession.   

I don’t doubt that some jobs will be created. But one hopes that this is not Obama’s new jobs strategy. You could create a lot of jobs by making jaywalking a prisonable offense too. Just imagine all the new prisons that would sprout up in economically depressed areas helping put people to work. 

If there is a silver lining in this nonsensical policy, let us hope that this insane pandering to the Left helps propel Republican Mark Kirk into the United States Senate. Fittingly, he would take the seat Barack Obama so recently (and for so short a duration) held.

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