Dick Cheney soft on terrorism?

As Sonny noted below, the recidivism rate for those released from Gitmo is uncomfortably high. ABC reports,

The first publicly released Pentagon analysis of the recidivism rates of former Guantanamo detainees, released in December 2008, showed the recidivism rate was 11 percent. That number trended upward to 14 percent when the second report was released in May, 2009.

So clearly, this was a problem that started under the previous adminstration. What’s hard to understand is why a such hard-headed administration released so many detainees who may have represented a national security threat.

You could argue that Democratic pressure, exaggeration, whatever forced Bush and Cheney to release a considerable number of detainees against their own best judgment. But how often did the Democrats’ criticism force Bush & Cheney to do anything they opposed on the subject of national security?