WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS? – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  A New Year's Eve gift to Americans, while Congress is out of town and the people are distracted by the holiday.  From Fox: 

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that five more prisoners will be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay to another nation, in the latest step by the Obama administration to whittle down the prisoner population in pursuit of ultimately closing the camp.

The five men will be transferred to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan for resettlement, the U.S. government announced.

The two men from Tunisia and three from Yemen -- who have been at the camp for a dozen years -- had been cleared for release from the prison by a government task force but could not be sent to their homelands. The U.S. has sent hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo to third countries but this is the first time Kazakhstan has accepted any for resettlement.

Their release brings the prison population at Guantanamo to 127, according to a Pentagon statement on Tuesday.

The transfer appears to be the latest step in the administration's strategy to rapidly bring down the prison population at Guantanamo, potentially to under 100, so that the White House can make a more aggressive argument to Congress that the camp should be closed. Congress continues to block Guantanamo prisoners from being brought for detention on the U.S. mainland.

Many vocal critics of the administration's push to close the camp, though, have not backed off their concerns. And the accelerated prisoner transfers have raised additional security concerns.

COMMENT:  Those concerns are legitimate.  It reminds me of this country's practice, before World War II, of selling scrap iron to Japan.  It came back to us in the form of bullets and shells.

Closing Gitmo was one of Obama's promises to the far left of the Democratic Party.  It's clear from recent actions that he intends to keep those promises during his last two years in office, when he no longer has to face the voters.

December 31,  2014