The White House has just announced their plan to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois.  From my briefings at GITMO and speaking with people who know the situation well, I can say that moving GITMO terrorists to Thomson, is a huge unnecessary gamble.

Those terrorists still remaining in GITMO are among the world’s most dangerous warriors. They are wickedly creative in thinking out of the box when contemplating doing us harm, as evidenced by the attacks of September 11, 2001.  They command the loyalty of thousands of fellow jihadists around the world and have complete control over the minds of followers, both in detention and on the outside.  On a whim, they can—and have—ordered those under their command to commit suicide at a moment’s notice.

I have enormous respect for American military personnel who will guard Thomson along with civilian law enforcement.  These professionals will undoubtedly be well-trained and dedicated to protecting the public.  But they will be responsible for guarding the largest terrorist cell in the world.

Those in favor of closing GITMO do not seem to get the fact that terrorists are not going to be mollified by simply changing the address of the terrorist’s prison.  Rather than satisfying the left-wing base and attempting to win an international public relations battle, we should keep the state-of-the-art detention facility in GITMO open rather than bringing these terrorists to small town America.  Terrorists need to be tried in military tribunals, as opposed to civil American courts that come with an array of rights of the accused, appropriate for criminals but not for terrorists.

This decision of moving GITMO terrorists to Thomson was rushed and planned in secrecy.  Rather than answering the questions about who exactly is coming, what security improvements are being made to Thomson and how much this will cost, the Administration is simply selling this as an economic stimulus package.  While the president’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates the relocation of these prisoners may reduce unemployment a few percentage points, it’s important to remember these are the same people who promised the unemployment rate would remain under 8 percent after the stimulus passed.  We’ve all seen how great those predictions have turned out.

The bottom line is Thomson is a top quality prison, very well equipped to handle maximum security criminals. It should be opened as a state or federal prison to ease overcrowding, but not to house the most dangerous terrorists in the world.  Only time will tell how wise or reckless this move is.

Before any decision is finalized we need answers to these critical questions.  Indeed, it was the answers to these questions that caused  Governors Granholm of Michigan and Sebelius of Kansas to say thanks but no thanks.

Thompson memo –

Presumably, the inmates at Guantanamo Bay are there because they are believed to be a threat to national security. How moving them into the United States then is a good idea is beyond our powers of reasoning. While we are well aware of the Corleone advice to keep one’s friend close and enemies closer, we’re pretty certain it wasn’t meant as national security advice.

Check back for further developments. Must credit Big Government.

Favorite son Barack Obama has so muddled his administration policy on terror detainees that we are left with an approach that nearly everyone eight years ago agreed was to be avoided.  That is, incarcerating terrorists on American soil.

An issue like this is always bound to elicit histrionics from both sides of the partisan divide—and no one has disappointed.  This new policy won’t lead to mass escapes of terrorists who will roam the heartland bombing at will.  Jihadist camps won’t spring up along the Mississippi River and Al Qaida is not likely to launch an assault on a rural Illinois prison.  But neither is this a simple economic development project that will create jobs and boom times for rural Illinois.  It is not an inconsequential relocation away from the politically charged Gitmo to a morally superior prison that  will win favorable international opinion.

What this is, however, is a poorly thought out proposal, that panders to the far left, and markedly improves the footing of the radical terrorist network dedicated to destroying America.

At its core, this proposal is a poor security decision.  The simple fact is that the American public is safer with hundreds of known terrorists imprisoned on a foreign island surrounded by five thousand Marines and the Caribbean Sea, than it is with those same prisoners housed within our shores.  No matter how unlikely an escape, insurrection or attack on such a prison may be it can never happen to our injury at Guantanamo Bay.

It is also a certainty that the moment these terrorists set foot on the mainland, their ACLU and other leftist legal shills will be assaulting the courts with litigation intended to win them rights, privileges and, eventually, freedom, based on sacred rights guaranteed to American citizens who are accused of a crime.  Just as placing terrorists on trial in New York will undermine the (apparently abandoned) war on terror, the litigation that will result from domestic incarceration of terror suspects will force the disclosure of intelligence and could win prisoners privileges that further undermine our safety.

It is also laughable that Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois seem to morally equate this proposal with building a new General Motors plant in a small Illinois town.  His position ignores the pathetic state of his state’s finances (created by his own party’s criminal mismanagement) that makes renting rooms to mass murderers a sound revenue enhancement strategy.  Durbin is also playing the pliant locals for fools in implying that they will benefit from great new jobs as a result.

If the Department of Defense, which is slated to run this mainland terrorist prison, does anything other than bringing in a crack unit of highly trained troops to run and guard this facility, they will be guilty of dereliction of duty.  The local folks, fine as they are, will not be staffing this prison.  The troops will spend some money in the local economy.  But this won’t be Fort Bragg or Newport News.  They won’t buy houses and cars.  It will be a temporary billet and (something the locals ought to remember) it will eventually go away.

There are sound legal reasons why we don’t want terror suspects brought to our soil.  It provides them with the ability to lay claim to rights they currently cannot.  Those rights may be granted by the right judge (read: Clinton or Obama appointee).  More liberty for terror suspects, even while behind bars, razor wire, electric fences and a moat with sea monsters, is less security for everyone else.  Add to this even the very remote chance of escape or attack and that is enough to recommend against this idea.

In this case, the incompetence of the administration in not developing a cogent and safe policy for bringing these terrorists to justice, coupled with the fiscal morass Democrats have created in Illinois that makes this financially attractive, should steel the resolve of residents of the Land of Lincoln to defend their sovereign state against this unwarranted and unwise encroachment by the federal government.

These jobs might come from the sale to the federal government of the Thomson correctional facility in west central Illinois where Obama could send some 100 detainees in preparation of closing down the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba facilities. Obama is struggling to figure out what to do with these detainees after his hastily made, ill-informed decision last January to close down the terrorist detainment facility.

After the idea was announced both Quinn and Durbin found themselves all excited to welcome these monsters into their state and both imagined that the occasion means that Illinois gets jobs. Durbin is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that this is a dramatic opportunity.

“This is an opportunity to dramatically reduce unemployment, create thousands of good-paying jobs and breathe new economic life into this part of downstate Illinois,” Mr. Durbin said. “We should not let the unsupported and misplaced fears of a few stand in the way of this historic economic boost to our region.”

And the Journal reported that Quinn was lobbying Obama for just such an “opportunity.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said he had a brief discussion with President Barack Obama this month about using the facility. He also wrote a letter last Thursday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Mr. Holder, saying the federal government would be hard-pressed to find a more secure prison.

Quinn told reporters “This is an economic opportunity that comes once in a lifetime for the people of Illinois,” and thinks that Illinois will see 3,000 jobs if the terrorists get sent to his state.

Can we review what is going on here? Quinn and Durbin are willing to give terrorists constitutional rights, they are willing to bring terrorists among the families of their own constituents, and they are pretending that this will bring jobs.

First of all, what are these so-called jobs? Are they real jobs that contribute to the state’s and the country’s economy? No they are not. They are faux jobs born of the federal treasury, not jobs that create any new economic activity. All these so-called jobs will do is shuffle money from other parts of the country (in taxes) and shift them to these make-work jobs in a federalized prison project.

These are not legitimate jobs. They are federal largess.

But all that pales in comparison to the fact that these folks are falling all over themselves to give terrorist enemies all the rights of a natural born American. These politicians are prepared to bestow Constitutional rights on these murderous cretins and bring some of the most dangerous people in the world into our communities.

There is another aspect of this that is absurd enough to border on the surreal. One of the things that leftists held against the Guantanamo Bay facility is the expense of maintaining the facilities. Many Democrats and leftists said it was too expensive for the American people to continue paying for. Of course the Guantanamo Bay facility is one installation, right? Now comes Obama to spread these terrorists all across the country effectively making the costs to house them many times more expensive to house these murderers because now instead of one facility we’ll have multiple facilities to pay for!

After all this, who can deny that Democrats are not to be trusted where it concerns national security?