Beltway know-it-all Newt Gingrich told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday this morning that it was not an “American problem” that 17 Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs might be sent back to their country to a death sentence after languishing, innocent at Guantanamo Bay, for seven years. These Chinese are just a handful of the 60 detainees (out of 250) who have been cleared so-far of wrong doing, but have yet to be released. That 20 percent of the detainees who remain at the military prison fear torture or persecution if they return to their home countries, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, is “not our problem”. That many of these home countries refuse to take even the innocent back is “not our problem.” In fact, thinking otherwise “verges on insanity,” cautions Papa Gingrich.

Gingrich is a joyful cog in the current GOP spin-machine trying to fire up Americans about President Obama’s plans to unleash “terrorists” into their cities, either to be tried in court or to live nearby on Mulberry Street. That would include the Chinese, who may just be loosed upon Gingrich’s home of Northern Virginia. To Gingrich, this is much worse that sending them back to China, where they will likely be tortured and executed.

“Why is this an American problem?” Gingrich asked.

So what, send them back to China? Wallace retorts (to his credit, sort of incredulously).

“Send them back to China”