Closing GITMO Makes Illinois a Target

Christmas Day Jihad bomber. Two days after I and my 2-year-old boy flew home from Chicago. There, but for the grace of God, go all of us. I am thankful for the brave young man on that plane who vaulted over seats and tackled the bomber, disarming him. But wait. This bomber was trained by ex-GITMO detainees? Might this information give pause to Obama Administration plans to close GITMO? It would appear not.

A panel of lawmakers voted [yesterday] in favor of letting Gov. Pat Quinn close a little-used prison in northwestern Illinois so the Obama administration can use it to hold terrorism suspects now held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 7-4 vote by the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability was largely on party lines, with Democrats supporting the sale of the Thomson Correctional Center to the federal government and all but two Republicans opposed.

More here.

So Obama and his extreme leftist followers can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Hey, at least GITMO will be closed, right? That HAS to be a good thing, right?

Ironically, however, most of the roughly 210 detainees still held at Guantánamo are not in supermax-type facilities at all. At least 70 percent live in communal settings like Camp 4. They can play soccer, basketball, or foosball; exercise on elliptical equipment; and consort with their fellow detainees for up to 20 hours per day in the outdoor recreation area. They can take art classes or learn English. And while tensions flare every now and again, life in Camp 4 is generally calm. Camp officials prefer that the detainees live in this type of setting. It’s easier on the guards and everyone else involved. As the commander of Camp 4 explains, the detainees have to “do something really bad” to get locked up in one of the more secure facilities....

Obama is closing Guantanamo Bay for appearances alone — it will do nothing to bolster our national security, and in fact is likely to weaken our national security — and is, ironically, sending them to a more inhumane prison. And while Obama claims that no one has ever escaped from a supermax prison, it shouldn’t alleviate any fears whatsoever. First, just because no one has ever escaped before doesn’t mean that no one ever will. Second, a supermax prison is vulnerable to attack (potentially leading to inmates escaping) in ways that Gitmo is not. It’s known that Al Qaeda has sleeper cells all over the country. What happens if Al Qaeda calls on one of those sleeper cells to attack the Illinois prison where these jihadists are housed? Obama’s plan is to take terrorists who want to kill us and plunk them right down in the middle of the United States and basically pray that they never escape. He wants to do this to pacify liberals who are outraged over living conditions at Gitmo, but the living conditions of the supermax prison they’ll be in are far crueler than the ones at Gitmo. It’s basically an epic FAIL on Obama’s part on every possible level.

More here.

By the way, I looked on the map to see the location of Thompson, Illinois. It is so far up in the northwest corner of Illinois, it is almost in Dubuque, Iowa.

UPDATE: Looks like some GITMO terrorists might be gearing up to file a lawsuit to stay in Sunny Guantanamo. For some reason the lockdown at Super Max doesn't appeal to them.