Cannot Make This Stuff Up

We're closing Gitmo! My soul will feel so cleansed when this process is complete. Finally, to have a President that understands complex moral imperatives. The WSJ Ed Page reports that a little American lucre has solved the nasty problem of the Uighurs:

Months of moral grandstanding and intense diplomacy are finally yielding dividends: President Obama has convinced Palau, a Pacific archipelago and long-standing U.S. ally, to resettle a small group of the least dangerous Guantanamo detainees. All it took was $200 million in foreign aid to a country with 20,000 residents and a GDP of about $164 million.

Headed to Palau are the Uighurs, ethnic Chinese Muslims who were picked up in 2002 near Tora Bora. Some of them received weapons training at Afghan camps affiliated with al Qaeda or the Taliban as part of their separatist movement -- the Uighur minority is brutally repressed by the Chinese government -- though they are not considered threats to the U.S. or other Western nations. But they were left in legal limbo because they could not be returned to China, where they would likely be tortured or worse, and no other country would give them sanctuary.

So the least dangerous are gone, at a cost of only $11.7 million per detainee. No doubt that Palau will treat them much better than the American military -- and less doubt that they are secured from future terrorist activity. It's a proud day for this great nation!

Freedom on the March Posted by John Kranz at June 11, 2009 12:09 PM