Detainees to Illinois: Can Obama’s Home State Sink Even Lower?

Illinois can be extra proud of its Democratic elected officials these days as they have joined to create a perfect storm of stupidity resulting in the possibility that terrorist detainees may be transferred to an unopened new prison in the rural northwestern corner of the Prairie State.

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.

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