In a wide ranging and very long interview with the Financial Times (likely behind subscription wall – thus the long excerpts below), former President Clinton discusses a number of issues, including that of Gitmo, which he unambiguously asks that the US close off:
Well it either needs to be closed down or cleaned up.
“…If you run a dictatorship, maybe all you want is for somebody to say they are guilty. If you are trying to preserve and expand freedom you want to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent.”
“Here’s the question you should ask yourself, ‘If we do this thing, whatever it is, will it change the fundamental character of my country?’ If the answer is yes, you’ve already given the terrorists a profound victory, so at all costs we should try to say ‘No. We will not do anything that changes the fundamental character of our country.”
Update [2005-6-20 5:9:38 by Jerome a Paris]: The link is actually freely accessible, so I have deleted the long extracts I had initially copied below the fold.
Clinton also said a bunch of other things in that interview; basically that he doesn’t have a solution to the long-term incarceration of terrorists.
This is what is so frustrating. I’m convinced that the vast majority of Americans oppose torture, and I think that this is reflected in our policy. But there are lots of residual problems, and the Democrats aren’t proposing solutions to those problems.
I go to the dnc.org web site and find NOTHING about Guantanamo, torture, or anything related to this issue. What would the Democrats do about this if they were in power? No known answer.