74 Former Guantanamo Detainees Have Resumed Terror Activities

Imagine your husband or wife or son or daughter was in the military and was killed by a detainee we had released from Guantanamo...

Paul Sperry in NYP:

THE Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terrorist activities after claiming they weren't terrorists.

Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure.
[...]
"We have on numerous occasions gotten literally straight-from-the-schoolhouse interrogators who are being stuck in with these hardened jihadists," a top security official at Gitmo told me. "And they essentially look at them and laugh."

He says many are 19-year-olds who lack battlefield skills and don't understand the first thing about jihad and militant Islam.

"They get played by detainees, who end up getting released because the interrogators believe them when they say they don't know anything and just want to go home and be a goat herder," he says.
[...]
Gitmo is now more madrassa than prison camp.

Detainees are fed a diet of violent anti-Western agitprop by sympathetic Muslim chaplains and librarians who have unfettered access to their cell blocks.
[...]
The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently realized that Islamic materials were helping radicalize its Muslim inmate population. So it purged its libraries of such books. It also no longer lets Muslim chaplains in the pen unescorted.

Guards now accompany them to prison chapels to make sure they preach in English.

At Gitmo, chaplains have on-demand access to detainees and minister to them in Arabic; library materials aren't screened for violent or anti-Western content. Is it any wonder so many detainees have rejoined the jihad?

Christopher Hitchens:

Nothing prepared me for the way in which the authorities at the [Guantanamo] camp have allowed the most extreme religious cultists among the inmates to be the organizers of the prisoners' daily routine. Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion. To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrasah.