The decision to provide the vaccine to terrorists ahead of U.S. citizens was criticized by Republican lawmakers.
By David Isaac, World Israel News
Outrage over reports that the Pentagon planned to vaccinate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for Covid-19 caused the Department of Defense to halt the plan on Saturday.
The decision to provide the vaccine to terrorists ahead of U.S. citizens was criticized by Republican lawmakers, leading to an uproar that forced the Pentagon to reverse a Friday announcement that Gitmo detainees would get the vaccine.
Guantanamo holds 40 prisoners, including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That attack was the worst on American soil, claiming 2,977 lives.
The New York Post reported on Saturday that New Yorkers, who still remember 9-11, were beside themselves at the news.
“‘It’s f–king nuts,’ Tom Von Essen, who was FDNY commissioner on 9/11 when 343 firefighters perished, said of KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] getting the vaccine before most Americans can,” the Post reported.
“You can’t make this up,” said Von Essen. “The ridiculousness of what we get from our government. They will run the vaccine down to those lowlifes at Guantanamo Bay before every resident of the United States of America gets it is the theater of the absurd.”
The bizarre decision to vaccinate terrorists before U.S. citizens is part of a general approach to U.S. prisoners during the pandemic, in which they are being offered corona vaccines and even released to avoid catching the disease.
Last spring, 170,000 U.S. prisoners were released, Reuters found. The freed inmates are said to be nonviolent but there have been several instances of those prisoners killing after their release, including a case in which a Virginia man murdered his accuser.