Posted by
Aaron Miller on Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:00:00 PM
This is the reason it matters whether captured terrorists are jailed on our own soil or at Guantanamo.
A hundred years of history has taught us that organized crime members in prisons can communicate with members outside.
Far more history has taught us that the people we put in prisons have a cultural effect on their fellow prisoners. Criminals tend to come out of prison more corrupt and more knowledgeable than when they entered. The last thing we need is for terrorists to be spreading their culture and knowledge among our prison populations.
It's not about those foreign terrorists roaming our streets. It's about those foreign terrorists encouraging homegrown terrorism exponentially. That's why we can never allow Al Qaeda veterans to be imprisoned on U.S. soil.