As soon as President Obama announced his plans to close Guantanamo Bay this morning, it was incumbent for Fox News hosts everywhere to denounce it. Andrea Tantaros led the charge on Fox News' Outnumbered, by describing the plan as sick and disgusting and called Gitmo a "tropical paradise," for those detainees that are imprisoned there.
Tantaros praised George Bush for prosecuting Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a US court, but then went on to describe how horrible it is for Obama to want to do the same thing on a much larger scale.
Tantaros: Imagine being a family member of someone who was killed by one of these terrorists or the special forces, our men and women spent years tracking down these deadly terrorists at the request of the US government. All their work is for nothing as they release them on the battlefield...
She went on about Ibrahim al Qosi, a former Gitmo inmate, who claimed he was tortured and is rumored to be back at the terrorism game.
Tantaros: There has not been one piece of evidence in Inspire magazine or otherwise that shows that Gitmo, a tropical paradise, has somehow been used as a recruiting tool. That is a flat out lie!
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It's not going to pass congress, gonna issue an executive order, it will be challenged. it will go to the Supreme Court. Conveniently without conservative justice Scalia there...the cost excuse is just a farce...it's insanity, it's illegal, it's disgusting.
Promoting the idea that Gitmo is "heaven on earth," shows the kind of mentality the Fox News host brings to the table. Maybe she'll take a vacation there and show off the fine cuisine and beachfront setting that is so wonderful?
Why are Conservative pundits so afraid of dealing with terrorists on our American soil? This will not impact their desire to attack us since we are the devil to them anyway. And we are a nation that is exceptional, are we not?
By the way, Andrea, The Atlantic has an extensive article from 2013, detailing how Gitmo is being used as a recruiting tool by the jihadists and even quoted articles in Inspire magazine that shows this to be true.
How Guantanamo Bay's Existence Helps Al-Qaeda Recruit More Terrorists
In 2010, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released the first issue of Inspire , their English language recruitment magazine. To date, AQAP has released 10 issues of Inspire, and the plight of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has been featured prominently in several issues.
In the 2010 inaugural issue of Inspire, an essay by Osama bin Laden mentions "the crimes at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo . . . which shook the conscience of humanity." Tellingly, bin Laden points out that "there has been no mentionable change" at Guantanamo and the prison is noted again later in the issue.
Gitmo features even more prominently in Issue 2 of Inspire. The essays of Abu Sufyan al-Azdi and Uthman al-Gamidi, two former detainees who returned to AQAP upon their release, call new individuals to join the jihad, whether at home or abroad. In Issue 7, Yahya Ibrahim notes that Guantanamo Bay "exposed the West for what it really is" and "showed the world the American understanding of human rights."
Most troubling, in the latest issue of Inspire released early this month, AQAP mentions Guantanamo Bay several times. In a prelude to the attention that the hunger strikers have been paid lately, Abu Musab al-Suri notes that Guantanamo is not only "filled with . . . mujahedeen" but also with "hundreds of innocent civilians." While it is quite rich to hear AQAP's concern for the plight of innocent civilians, given the high number of Yemenis cleared for release still at Guantanamo, this is a very salient message for AQAP's base in Yemen.
