Republicans push for look into Yemeni terrorist networks

What’s that old saying? Something about not understanding history and repeating it? I think it’s something along those lines.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Tuesday rereleased a letter he sent last month to Holder demanding that the Department of Justice suspend a program that sends select Guantanamo detainees to Saudi Arabia to shed their extremist tendencies.

The program has not been successful, Sessions contends, and his letter alleges that 11 of Saudi Arabia’s 85 most-wanted terrorists are “graduates of the Saudi program.”

Sessions also asserts links between the rehabilitation program and Yemeni terrorism. The graduates of the program, according to Sessions, include Said Ali al Shihri, now the deputy leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish, Al Qaeda’s current theological leader on the Arabian Peninsula.

You know, this all is actually a fair point. Terrorists are all over the place. Maybe what this will foster is a realization that terrorism isn’t limited to enclaves in the mountains of one or two countries, and so trying to “eliminate” terrorism via warfare is a fool’s errand. As in, see where all the terrorists are and use it as reason to re-shift our strategy to homeland defense rather than invading every single place that has terrorists.

Right?

McCain and fellow US senator Joseph Lieberman, who both visited Yemen in August, told reporters on a one-day trip to Baghdad that the United States needed to help Yemen build up its economy.

“We cannot allow Yemen to be a base for Al-Qaeda to mount attacks on other countries in the region as well as the United States,” said McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

Son of a bitch.