Obama's Dangerous Game Of Trying To Close Gitmo

It's no deep secret that the President has wanted to close the terrorist interment facility at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) since 2009.

Now, 6 years after taking office, he is still saddled with 127 prisoners; having just released 5 more on New Year's Eve at a time when no one was really paying attention.  Those 5 just released were supposedly determined to be of a medium threat.  But, if so, why has it taken more than a decade to find a home for them and the remaining 127?

The truth is, that all the easy-to-transfer inmates had all been moved before Obama took office.  Even so, about 19% of those who left that facility under Bush rejoined the battlefields against the U.S., Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Today, Gitmo houses the worst-of-the-worst, and this is why Obama has had so much difficulty finding countries that will take them. Consider, as an example, the Bergdahl deal.  Those 5 prisoners, who were traded for a possible U.S.deserter, were all extremely high level Taliban commanders and, my guess, is that their return-to-battle rate will be a lot higher than any of those released in the past.  This is the problem with trying to close Gitmo.  We are now faced with freeing some of the worst terrorist bad guys that we had captured.  It would be similar to our prison system dumping every "FBI's Most Wanted" inmates onto the street and expecting them not to return to their former lives of crime.

The statistics prove this out.  Of the 532 detainees released by Bush, the recidivism rate was only 19%.  Today, with Obama having released 88 prisoners since 2009, the rate has gone up to 29% and climbing higher by the day.  In effect, President Obama is hell-bent on freeing the kind of people that could do this country the greatest harm, and that's a very dangerous game to play merely to make good on a 2008 campaign promise. 

References:

US releases 5 more Guantanamo Bay prisoners, sends them to Kazakhstan: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/31/us-releases-5-more-guantanamo-bay-prisoners-sends-them-to-kazakhstan/

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl exchanged for top 5 Taliban commanders: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/05/sgt_bowe_bergdahl_ex.php

Under President George W. Bush's tenure, 532 detainees were released from the detention facility.  88 Guantanamo detainees were released by Obama. "The recidivism rate is nearly 29 percent and has been climbing steadily...": https://news.vice.com/article/new-us-intelligence-report-a-former-gitmo-detainee-recently-returned-to-the-fight