Barack Obama cares nothing for the safety of Americans

A harsh blanket statement, to be sure.

But what other conclusion can one draw when the President puts a premium on closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay -- and is willing to entrust the "rehabilitation" of its current residents to YEMEN?!?

Yemen 'to host Guantanamo rehab centre'
Yemen and Washington are in talks to set up a rehabilitation centre in the Arab state for Guantanamo detainees.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 12:23AM GMT 27 Jan 2010

The move would help President Barack Obama achieve his elusive goal of closing the controversial US prison.

The issue will be raised for the first time in an international setting on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting in London on Wednesday...

A source close to the Obama administration said the Yemenis had agreed in principle to the establishment of a Reintegration and Risk Reduction Initiative, which would be internationally funded and monitored.

Aimed at steering detainees back into society, it would be modeled on previous efforts in Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Let's recall that the Christmas Pantybomber (the "Fruit of Kaboom Bomber," as Rush Limbaugh dubbed him) was dispatched to the USA by Yemeni handlers that included past graduates of the Saudi version of this rehabilitation program. So of course to the Obama Administration, it only makes sense to quintuple down on this approach: after all, the guy's underwear didn't actually detonate, so it's all cool, right?

I note that this stupidity has the tacit approval of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State:

The project has support from within the US state department and is gaining ground among White House advisers, said the source, because it would help the president dig himself out of a large hole created by his pledge to close the prison while trying to avoid releasing terror suspects back into the militant fold. Having missed his Jan 22 deadline to close the detention centre, as things stand Guantanamo is unlikely to shut this year.

God protect us from idiots such as this:

"If Guantanamo was a recruitment tool before, it will be a super-recruitment tool once Yemenis are the majority there," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that has helped draft the proposal.

"Obviously we don't want a situation where former detainees could just leave or where they simply faced indefinite detention in Yemen rather than in a US facility," she added. "But programmes that include job skills, family support and carefully watched re-integration have been shown to work."

If the Obama Administration goes forward with this suicidal insanity, it should at least condition the program on Ms. Mandelson going to Yemen to work directly with the "retrainees." After all, she should have nothing to fear from them, right?

After 3,000 years, still strangers in a strange land

Jews have lived on the Arabian Peninsula since well before the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam. A remnant still do in a few places -- but perhaps one of those places, Yemen, will be Judenrein soon.

KHARIF, Yemen – In this village in northern Yemen, where a kosher butcher slaughters chickens and the school bus carries young boys in side curls along a dirt track to their Hebrew studies, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Arab world is fighting for its survival.

Yemen's Jews, here and elsewhere in the country, are thought to have roots dating back nearly 3,000 years to King Solomon. The community used to number 60,000 but shrank dramatically when most left for the newborn state of Israel.

Those remaining, variously estimated to number 250 to 400, are feeling new and sometimes violent pressure from Yemeni Muslims, lately inflamed by Israel's fierce offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza that cost over 1,000 Palestinian lives.

They face a Yemeni government that is ambivalent — publicly supportive but also lax in keeping its promises — in an Arab world where Islamic extremism and hostility to minorities are generally on the rise.

"There is hardly a mosque sermon that's free of bigotry. The government's own political rhetoric marginalizes the Jews, and civil society is too weak to protect them," says Mansour Hayel, a Muslim Yemeni and human rights activist who is an expert on Yemen's Jewry.

One can clearly see whether the Arab and Muslim world has become a better or worse place -- even in terms of the welfare of its Muslim citizens -- since it expelled the bulk of its Jewish population.