The Republicans really think that America is a nation of cowards. They really think people are so scared of the terrorists that we are holding in Cuba that they’ll revolt if they are moved to America.
GOP pollster Glen Bolger called the strategy a homerun for a minority party that has had difficulty finding a potent issue to play off of.
“Gitmo is NIMBY on steroids,” Bolger said. “All in favor of having Gitmo terrorists housed in your Congressional District raise your hand. Whoa — no hands go up!”
“This issue is at the intersection of good policy and good politics. That’s been a rarity for the GOP over the last few years,” Bolger said.
As I wrote yesterday, the ADX Florence Supermax facilty in Colorado already holds some of the worst terrorists in the world. And how did the people in the area feel about building that facility?
ADX Florence opened in November 1994. The residents in Florence’s surrounding area, Fremont County, welcomed the prison as a source of employment in a time of economic hardship. At the time, the county was already home to nine existing prisons. However, the lure of between 750 to 900 permanent jobs, in addition to another 1,000 temporary jobs during the prison’s construction, led residents in the area to raise $160,000 to purchase 600 acres (2.4 km2) for the new prison. Hundreds of people attended the groundbreaking construction of ADX Florence, which cost over $60 million.
My community could use 900 permanent and 1,000 temporary jobs. Why not give us a $60 million contract to build a supermax facility right here in Chester Co., Pennsylvania. We’d be proud to take the Gitmo prisoners, provided they get due process and a fair trial.
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The development authority in Hardin, Montana, a city of 3,400 people bordering the Crow Indian Reservation, built the $27 million, 460-bed jail two years ago and has been looking for tenants ever since. Its construction loans are in default.
The City Council voted 5-0 Tuesday in favor of a resolution supporting a proposal to house terror suspects currently detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay while they await trial.
“Somebody has to stand up and put (the Guantanamo prisoners) in their backyards. It’s our patriotic duty,” said Greg Smith, director of the city’s Two Rivers Authority.
“Not on my watch,” U.S. Sen. Max Baucus said.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It’s their patriotic duty, is right.
Baucus is a coward who wrongly thinks his constituents are cowards, too.
l hereby nominate that for non sequitur of the
dayyear.The Prison Industrial Complex.
I’ve been puzzled by what is taking the Obama administration so long to deal with the disposition of the Guantanamo prisoners.
Here’s my guess and it doesn’t involve not wanting to do it.
First, we know that the Bush administration never intended to let any of these folks stand trial in US courts or have adequate representation before the vaunted military commissions. Which means from the git-go, they did a poor job of keeping records in a form that would facilitate winning a trial.
Second, we know that they considered some but not all of these prisoners to be “high value”.
Third, we know that the high value prisoners were the most likely to be tortured.
Fourth, we know that the most difficult cases to dispose of is exactly those high value prisoners that the GOP is so deathly afraid of.
Here are some unanswered questions that affect trial:
These questions are not unanswerable nor do they indicate that the issues are insoluble. But they require some substantial and careful thought.
I think you’ve answered your own question. Jose Padilla is a good example of what we can expect. A lot of these folks probably can’t be charged with anything more than training in a terrorist camp, which in itself is a dubious charge in many cases due to retroactivity and jurisdiction.
You can’t really use a witness you’ve waterboarded 183 times and refuse to plea bargain with.
I didn’t ask what we could expect. I expect a lot of different individualized solutions.
I asked what’s taking so long, and put out some hypotheses in the form of seemingly (and maybe actually) difficult questions.
I raise the question of “On what basis are you alleging that this person trained in a terrorist camp.” Show me the evidence.
I suspect that most of the “nothing more than trained in a terrorist camp” folks have already been released in the last days of the Bush administration.
As for plea bargaining a prisoner’s mental capacity, harmed during torture, to understand the terms could very well hamper any plea bargaining solution. Of course, that would argue detention at a psychiatric prison like Camp Butner.