Official defends Gitmo plan.

Lieberman, McCain and Lindsay Graham are never slow to exploit an attempted terrorist attack to imply that Obama and the Democrats are weak on national security, which is why they are now calling for a halt of the transfer of any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen, in the light of the failed Christmas Day terrorist plot.

The White House are pushing back:

A senior Obama administration official pushed back against critics of the White House’s plans to transfer some detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Yemen as it moves toward closing the facility, saying the process for transfers are “consistent with our national security interests.”

“I am aware of a lot of people pointing back at the way the transfers were handled under the Bush administration that apparently they have some concerns about that,” said the official, who had not seen the senators’ letter. “I didn’t hear many of those concerns at the time, but there were obviously hundreds and hundreds of detainees that were transferred under the old regime.”

The official explained that the administration’s policy requires that Congress be notified of any transfers, that they are “consistent with our national security interest,” and that each case is reviewed “with a fine-toothed comb.”

“And we believe that each of those that we have done so far enhances our national security,” the official said. “I think that some of us were struck by the fact when Al Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula itself was formed,” the official added, “one of the recruiting and motivational tools that it used in its initial announcement to generate sympathy for its cause for recruits was the facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

Anyone released from Guantanamo Bay who ended up working for al Qaeda, was released under the Bush administration, so why isn't there more questioning of why the Bush administration didn't properly vet the people they were letting go?

If McCain, Graham and Lieberman were genuinely concerned with national security - as opposed to making cheap opportunistic points - then they should be calling for a thorough examination of why the Bush regime released certain people who are now working against the US.

And, if they were serious about tackling terrorism, then they would also have to consider the value of Guantanamo Bay to al Qaeda as a recruiting tool.

Instead, they seek to make Obama responsible for the mistakes of the previous regime which they totally supported.

There's a cheapness to these Republican tactics which I find simply shameful. But it's sadly all too predictable. This is simply what these buggers do.

UPDATE:

I've commented before on the blatant double standard which is employed whenever a Democrat is in the White House, but this takes some beating:

President Obama wants us all to know he’s taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety. But his words would be a lot more convincing if not delivered during time snatched between rounds of golf, swimming and sunbathing. . . .

Returning to Washington would have sent the world a powerful message of a president willing to drop everything and roll up his sleeves -- someone who really means business.

As I've pointed out before Bush didn't even bother to comment on Richard Reid's attempt to blow up an airplane for SIX DAYS, far less beat a path back to Washington.

So why is this behaviour utterly unacceptable once a Democrat is in the White House?

Why would Obama's message be "a lot more convincing if not delivered during time snatched between rounds of golf, swimming and sunbathing" and yet this behaviour was perfectly acceptable when Bush was president?



UPDATE II:



This is how ludicrous Republicans are becoming in an attempt to attack Obama. It is now suspicious for a President to spend time in his home state.

MADDEN: President Obama right now has suffered very greatly in the last few months because of the fight over health care, and he has very little political capital right now. So Republicans feel it is in vogue to criticize this president.

And then lastly, you have to also remember the fact that the president being on vacation in Hawaii, it’s much different than being in Texas. Hawaii to many Americans seems like a foreign place. And I think those images, the optics, hurt President Obama very badly.

You couldn't make that up. It's beyond pathetic.

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Tags: Lieberman, McCain, Graham, Yemen, Guantanamo bay