Daphne Evitiar doesn’t seem to note anything unusual about this:
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent a letter to President Obama today asking him to halt the transfer of six Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. The request, they say, is in light of the danger they’ve apparently just now realized Yemen poses, because Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has said he was trained there.
The only problem: those six detainees have already been returned to Yemen.
According to a Department of Justice announcement on Dec. 20, six Yemeni detainees — Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf — were transferred to the government of Yemen more than ten days ago.
Now, reading between the lines, it’s clear that there was a massive security slip on the parts of Graham, McCain and Lieberman. After all, the only logical reason to ask Obama to not do something that has already happened would be if the United States government possesses a time machine. Foreign intelligence agencies aren’t dumb, and they’ve probably already started notifying their governments to increase funding to time travel projects now. How long now until Iran gets ahold of a flux capacitor?
I mean, it has to be the case that this letter is proof of the existence of time travel. The only other logical explanation is that these three Senators are playing fast and loose with the facts in order to score cheap political points against the President while he’s trying to cope with a possible new terrorist threat. And surely men who have achieved the notable office of Senator would never do anything like that.
Right?
Update: For the record, there is not another group of six Yemeni prisoners being considered for release.
Yesterday I searched for hours to find out if there were six more detainees hidden somewhere that the administration was about to send back, some particularly dangerous Yemenis about to leave Gitmo that maybe these senators knew about and the rest of us didn’t. But no, there aren’t. The Justice Department and lawyers representing Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo, at least, knew nothing about such impending plans for another group of six. And when I asked Graham’s press office just which six Yemeni detainees they were talking about — Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop couldn’t name them, either.
The only logical conclusion is that the three senators were referring to six detainees who’d already been sent back to Yemen — and that they were doing so purely to try to embarrass the Obama administration and create yet another obstacle to closing down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
