Investors Business Daily, Editorial, June 5, 2008

Election 2008: It’s fitting that an ex-Muslim chaplain who once insisted there weren’t any terrorists at Gitmo is a delegate for Barack Obama, who’s itching to shut down Gitmo.

James “Yousef” Yee, a former Army Muslim chaplain charged with espionage while serving at Gitmo, will represent Washington state for Obama at the Democratic National Convention, where he’ll likely have a center-stage speaking role.
The two are a perfect match. Obama promises to not only close Gitmo, but “reform” the USA Patriot Act. He apparently plans to take those steps in between tea parties with state sponsors of terror.

Since the Pentagon in 2004 dropped charges against him, Yee has become a poster boy of the anti-war movement. He’s cashed in on his ignominy with a book claiming he was the target of “sheer bigotry” and was silenced for exposing “systemic” abuse of prisoners at Gitmo.

One of his biggest boosters in Washington is Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the Muslim convert who insisted on taking the oath of office on the Quran. Ellison is an Obama superdelegate who’s been doing advance work for Obama’s planned tea parties in the Middle East.

Last month, he told an Egyptian weekly that Yee’s “case was dropped because there was no case to begin with.”

Nice try. Here are the facts:

1. Yee was caught returning to the U.S. with maps of Gitmo prison facilities, among other classified materials, and was arrested at a U.S. airport.
2. He was charged with espionage, mishandling classified documents and lying to investigators.
3. He served hard time in a South Carolina stockade.
4. Two of his Muslim cronies at Gitmo were convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.
5. Far from being exonerated, the military dropped charges against him to protect national security.

Guantanamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who originally accused Yee of spying, explained that there were “national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence” if the case moved to trial.

There’s no question that Yee, a captain who converted to Islam, was sympathetic to al-Qaida and Taliban captives at Gitmo.
At times, in fact, he acted more like a defense attorney for the terrorists. He complained that guards subjected them to cruel “abuse” and “psychological torture.”

Waterboarding? Electric shock? No, they committed the sadistic act of mishandling copies of the Quran that Yee had made sure each inmate received.

He also saw to it that each copy of the Quran came with a surgical mask to cradle the Muslim holy book above ground to keep it safe and clean.

In addition, Yee convinced his superiors to provide the Muslim prisoners with prayer beads, prayer oils, prayer caps and up to half a dozen books on Islam from the library, which he stocked with some $26,000 worth of Arabic and English titles.
Thanks to him, the terrorists have been able to brush up on their jihad as they await repatriation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan.

But not to worry, Yee says, he didn’t see any terrorists there. “It’s safe to say there weren’t any prisoners who could be definitely connected to hard-core terrorism,” he recently told BBC Radio.

What’s scary is, the Democrat presidential candidate he’s supporting seems to agree with the fairy tale, which is why Obama has also earned the endorsement of the lawyers for Gitmo detainees.

Maybe they’ll get to speak in Denver, too — an entire Gitmo delegation for Obama.