Recidivism

MANIFESTO

The plan to close Gitmo and the concomitant prisoner transfer certainly has allowed the hysterics to strut their stuff while making BO look less than effective. Now, as if to demonstrate just how prescient senators are, it's being reported today that

about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

I'm sure that many (I'm looking at you, Pat Roberts.) will use this statistic to underscore just how dangerous the inmates are and how perilous it might be if they were on the US mainland.

I'm not impressed.

Given the fact that more than half of US inmates are re-incarcerated after they serve their prison terms, one out of seven doesn't seem that bad.

Nevertheless, the overwrought legislators seem to think that if "the terr'ists" are imprisoned in the US, they'll somehow consort with our women, drink our blood, and (h/t to Atrios) crawl up through our toilets and steal our vital essence.

I may have more to say on this (including my belief that, in the flush of victory, BO may have gone overboard on January 21), but, at the very least, no one looks particularly admirable in this episode.