Jewish World Review June 15, 2009 / 24 Sivan 5769

Terrorists banished to the beach — on your dime

By Jack Kelly

	>

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | American households lost $1.3 trillion in net worth in the first three months of this year, thanks to declining stock prices and home values, the Federal Reserve reported last week.

So you may not be able to afford that beach vacation this year. But your tax dollars — lots of your tax dollars — are being used to provide terrorists who want to kill you with one.

President Obama announced he would close the prison at Guantanamo Bay before he had places to put the terrorists incarcerated there, who cannot safely be released (because they'd almost certainly return to terrorism), or tried in U.S. courts (because important secrets likely would be disclosed in the course of their trials).

Americans, by a 57 percent to 28 percent margin, oppose moving those incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay to prisons in the United States, according to a Rasmussen poll released May 26. The intensity of public opposition has caused Congress to pass measures both to forbid the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the U.S., and to deny President Obama funds to close the prison in Cuba until he comes up with a plan for what to do with the prisoners there.

This led to a frantic search by the administration for other countries willing to take some of the terrorists off American hands. According to the New York Times, about 100 countries have refused.

The search led to the tiny resort paradise of Palau, an island nation (population 20,000) about half way between Guam and the Philippines. It's a former U.S. trust territory that became independent in 1994.

For $200 million in aid, the government of Palau has said it will take 13 Chinese Muslims (Uighurs) off the president's hands. The Uighurs were captured at the al Qaida training camp at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, but are deemed by the administration to be eligible for release because they were training to kill Chinese, not Americans.

The price is steep. It comes to about $15.4 million per Uighur. The $200 million exceeds the gross domestic product of Palau, which, according to the CIA World Factbook, was $164 million last year. Despite the windfall the Uighurs represent, the plan to resettle them in Palau "has sparked anger among islanders who fear for the safety of the tranquil tourist haven," the AP reported Friday (6/12).

Four other Uighurs arrived Thursday (6/11) in Bermuda, an island paradise much closer to us. The consideration offered by the Obama administration to the government of Bermuda for taking the Uighurs has not been disclosed.

"Having been raised as an oppressed minority in the hardscrabble mountains of northwestern China, they will live in one of the richest of lands — a place with more golf courses per square foot than anywhere in the world," the New York Daily News said.

The British government responded with "ill-disguised fury" to the arrival of the Uighurs, the Times of London reported Thursday (6/11). Bermuda is part of what little remains of the British empire, and London is responsible for the island's foreign policy and domestic security.

But neither the government in Bermuda nor that of the United States bothered to tell the Brits about the Uighurs.

The Uighurs are jihadists who at Guantanamo Bay were "known for picking up television sets on which women with bare arms appear and hurling them across the room," noted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Many women in Palau and Bermuda go about with bare arms. But aside from offending yet again our foremost ally in the world, and draining our treasury of money we can ill afford to spend, the Obama administration's Uighur deals probably pose little risk to Americans.

It's his next deal that should have us sweating bullets. About 100 of the prisoners remaining at Gitmo are Yemenis. The administration is planning to send an undisclosed number to Saudi Arabia for "re-education."

The Saudi program has a high recidivism rate. Among its graduates are al Qaida's current number two in Yemen, and a Taliban leader in southern Afghanistan.