It is a nefarious kind of 21st Century recycling — freeing terrorists from the prison at Guantanamo Bay so they can return home and plot new strikes on America. That's just what happened to Saeed Ali Shehri. A Saudi national freed for unspecified reasons from the America's Cuba-based lockup in 2007, he returned home, underwent a Saudi rehabilitation program — apparently with his fingers crossed — and has ended up as the second-ranking leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). From there, it appears his organization helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab plot his failed Christmas bombing of Northwest Flight 253.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama said he would close Guantanamo Bay within a year. He's not going to make that deadline, and the fact that nearly half of Guantanamo's remaining 200 detainees are from Yemen could delay the shutdown even longer. His plan relies on shipping most of those detainees back to their home countries, with a smaller number headed to a prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Yemen is plainly becoming an al-Qaeda hotbed. In addition to Shehri, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — the Yemeni-based, American-raised cyber pen pal of Army Major Nidal Hasan who is accused of killing 13 Army personnel at Fort Hood in November — is now living in Yemen and may have been in contact with Abdulmutallab. The chief religious adviser of the Yemeni-based AQAP — Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish — also did time at Guantanamo. "The President's continual release of Guantanamo Bay detainees presents an unacceptable risk to American lives," said retired U.S. Navy commander Kirk Lippold, who was captain of the U.S.S. Cole when a pair of al-Qaeda operatives blew up their skiff alongside it, killing 17 of Lippold's crew in 2000. "We cannot rely on so-called 'reform camps' in places like Saudi Arabia to prevent terrorists from striking again."

The senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has joined many of her G.O.P. colleagues in saying such transfers need to be suspended. "Guantanamo detainees should not be released to Yemen at this time," Sen. Dianne Feinstein said. "It is too unstable." But the White House shows no sign of changing course. "We're confident that any transfers that we're making are being made not only consistent with our national security interests," a senior Administration official told reporters on Dec. 29, "but also consistent with what we consider to be a fundamental national security interest in closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

During his presidential campaign, Obama criticized Guantanamo as little more than terrorist advertising.