By Debbie Schlussel

Sorry I’ve been away for a few days because of a few things, including a brief trial and getting better from my illness (while putting up with broken air conditioning in sweltering heat). But I’m baaaaack. While I was gone, the Obama Administration decided that it is now afraid of Islamic terrorists it released from Guantanamo Bay who it claimed were “not terrorists.” Turns out that when these cretins got a little too close for comfort to members of the Obama Administration, suddenly these “not terrorists” were actually terrorists again, after all.

The rest of us knew they were terrorists all along. They’d trained in Islamic terrorist training camps hosted by Al-Qaeda and its ilk, and we knew they were bent on our destruction. And so did Barack Obama, despite his and his minions’ claims that these were just nice, innocent Muslims immorally kept at Gitmo. Shocker: Obama lied. You see these Gitmo terrorists were sent to Uruguay. But the house where they live is right near the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo. And so these terrorists have the chutzpah to demonstrate in front of the U.S. Embassy, because after a decade of Gitmo-fare, they are demanding more welfare from the United States. They’ve been offered jobs, but they don’t want to work. They just want Uncle Sam to be their sugar daddy. Their protesting has made U.S. Embassy staff and personnel worried and frightened because, hey, they are terrorists after all. If they weren’t terrorists, why would anybody worry about being near them?

Struggling to adjust to their new environs, with no Spanish or relevant work skills, unable to reunite with their families or get passports, four of the six former inmates who were sent to Uruguay’s capital have set up a make-shift protest camp outside the U.S. Embassy. They pledge to stay there until the U.S. agrees to provide housing and income. “If the Uruguayan government cannot take care of us, the U.S. government should,” said one of the men, Ali Shabaan, a 32-year-old Syrian who spent almost 13 years at Guantanamo, adding that the U.S. is legally and ethically liable for their predicament. “It’s not easy to adapt to freedom after such a long time. Even if we were released into our own countries, it would be hard.”

Likewise, the detainees’ close proximity to the U.S. Embassy—aside from their encampment, their house is six blocks away—has unnerved American diplomats’ security details, say U.S. officials and congressional aides, leading to more frequent patrols around the embassy. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward Royce, a California Republican, raised concerns in an April 29 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, about what he described as a lack adequate safeguards to ensure that the ex-detainees won’t threaten the U.S., including the embassy in Montevideo.

“This close proximity to the embassy, combined with the apparent lack of host country mitigation measures, poses a potential risk to the safety and security of our embassy and its employees, including local hires,” Mr. Royce said in the letter, which hasn’t been publicly released.

Ian Moss, a spokesman for the Office of the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure at the State Department, declined to discuss any of the specific assurances the U.S. might have received from Uruguay regarding the former detainees. But he said: “The decision to transfer a detainee is made only after detailed, specific conversations with the receiving country about the potential threat a detainee may pose after transfer and the measures the receiving country will take in order to sufficiently mitigate that threat.”

Um, what “threat”? How can there be a threat, if as Obama falsely pretends, they are not terrorists?

The men ended up in Uruguay after former President José Mujica gave them refugee status. In a 2014 letter to Mr. Mujica ahead of their release, the State Department’s then-Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure Clifford Sloan told the Uruguayan president that the U.S. had no information that the six detainees “were involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities against the United States or its partners or allies.”

Mr. Royce, in his letter to Mr. Kerry, called those “dubious assertions.” The Bush administration ascertained that they had received terrorist training, including in how to carry out suicide operations. Mr. Royce also questioned the Uruguayan government’s provision of Mercosur identity cards to the ex-detainees, allowing them to travel across member states of the South American customs union. . . . When the ex-detainees arrived, Uruguay’s labor confederation lent them a house they share and gave them job training, while Montevideo gave them a $600 monthly stipend. But the former prisoners fear the agreements could end in February.

Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin said this past week that Uruguay wasn’t obligated to give them additional aid. He also said the men had mistakenly understood they would receive housing and a stipend for three years. Still, Uruguayan officials say they will help the refugees after February. . . .Gabriel Melgarejo, a union exe cutive who helped arrange housing for the men, said the country’s labor confederation cannot provide assistance to them indefinitely. But he said that when the men are ready, labor groups will help find them jobs.

A country of 3.3 million with an estimated Muslim population of just a few hundred, Uruguay is far from home, and memories of Guantanamo are still fresh for these men. Some of the refugees said the government hasn’t permitted them to bring family members to Uruguay.

Gee, a smart country, clearly much smarter than ours on Muslim immigration. Well, maybe not . . . .

Christian Mirza, the liaison between Uruguay’s government and the refugees, said the government was trying to help bring their family members to Uruguay. The four refugees—three Syrians and one Tunisian—have been living outside the U.S. Embassy since April 24. A fifth is ill and another declined to participate in the protest, Mr. Shabaan said.

Mr. Shabaan and the other men have found it hard to adjust in Uruguay. They can’t watch movies on local TV because they don’t understand Spanish. They would like to subscribe to Netflix, but don’t have credits cards to do so. They don’t have driver’s licenses or bicycles, nor could they afford a car or a bike. “We still lack the basic essentials that you need to live normal life,” Mr. Shabaan said.

Awwwwwwww. My heart bleeds for them.

Oh, and by the way, these ex-Gitmo terrorists are asking the U.S. government to send them . . . back to Gitmo. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Who knew the Gitmo Welfare Society was a thing?