Thomson move by the (al-Qaida) prison handbook

There's no date yet for the garage sale at Gitmo.

Nevertheless, White House officials are about to send off a supply of wardrobe boxes so 250 radical Islamist terrorists can start packing their thobe robes for a one-way trip to Illinois.

Expect an announcement before the end of the year that part of the nearly empty Thomson, Illinois, state penitentiary will be turned into a prison camp for Guantanamo inmates. Might I recommend that the feds also buy a selection of thermal taqiyahs to keep the prisoners' scalps from getting chilly. Northwestern Illinois isn't as warm as eastern Cuba in the wintertime.

A draft of a memo prepared by the Justice Department identified Thomson as the number one site under consideration. The memo had been "leaked" to a political Web site; however, don't confuse the term "leaked" with "unapproved." Most information leaked by politicians or their top staffers is part of a grand scheme devised by operatives in a formerly smoky room.

Asked about the memo, a White House official described it as "pre-decisional," which makes perfect sense. "Pre" means before and "decisional" means the act of making a decision. Since a decision hasn't been made yet, pre-decisional is an apt description ... especially if the White House official was pre-delusional as to what the outcome will be.

Once the place is purchased by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Gitmo prisoners are moved to Thomson, the fun will begin.

Just like it did at Guantanamo.

Call it playing by the book.

The "Declaration of Jihad" book.

The rules of engagement for captured terrorists are prescribed as clearly as can be in lesson 18. That is the chapter titled "Prisons and Detention Centers." Here are the first two, and presumably most important, rules for prisoners to follow:

1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security (investigators) before the judge.

2. Complain (to the court) of mistreatment while in prison.

So, whether or not terrorist prisoners have been strung up by their toenails, they are to "insist on proving torture was inflicted on them" and "complain of mistreatment while in prison."

Such tactics shouldn't be surprising. The playbook was found by British police in May of 2000 on a computer seized during a raid of Osama bin Laden's one-time personal secretary.

Even though the 180-page "al-Qaida handbook," was authenticated and used by federal prosecutors, it has been criticized as incomplete and not the genuine article.

You can't argue with this: The rules set forth in the prison section of the Jihad handbook line up with the behavior of top terrorist suspects at Gitmo.

"The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge," states one rule for captured Jihadists. "These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases."

If you don't still don't believe that Thomson-bound terrorists are just following orders by fabricating torture claims, consider these comments:

"al-Qaida's training manual, seized by British authorities in Manchester, England, openly instructs detained al-Qaida fighters to claim torture and other types of abuse as a means of obtaining a moral advantage over their captors. That advice has been routinely followed by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, who have succeeded in generating incessant demands from international actors or for the base's closure or 'for their own liberation,' unquote. That's what was in their manual."

Those are of the words of Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, during a hearing last May on closing Guantanamo.

"Isn't the administration's closure of Gitmo and the removal of enemy combatants, possibly even in the United States, a complete victory of lawfare for al-Qaida?" Rep. Franks asked Attorney General Eric Holder, who was a witness at the hearing.

"I mean, what else could they (the terrorists) possibly ask for if this is in their book and we're following it to the letter? What more could they ask for us to do?" Franks said.

Atty. Gen. Holder replied: "I don't think it's a victory. I think it'll be a victory for our country and a victory for the causes that we fight for by closing Guantanamo and taking from al-Qaida the ability to recruit and point to that place as a place where inappropriate things happen, true or not. I mean, that has become a symbol of practices that this administration has decided not to use.

So I don't see the closing of Guantanamo as a victory at all for al-Qaida. I think it's going to be a victory for the American people and for our allies."

Regardless, the 559 official residents of Thomson, Illinois, will soon be able to decide for themselves. As they greet the prison buses rolling down Highway 84, they should be prepared to see rule #8B in action from the Jihadist training manual.

"When the brothers are transported from and to the prison (on their way to the court) they should shout Islamic slogans out loud from inside the prison cars to impress upon the people and their family the need to support Islam."

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.