RSS Feed MenuOn January 22, 2009 President Obama acted impulsively in issuing an executive order closing the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay in one year. The President decided to close Guantanamo without having a backup plan as to where the terrorists would be held. He is now talking about transferring those detainees to facilities within the United States. NewMajority has interviewed 9/11 families, security experts and members of Congress. All agree: Not here.
Three possible areas mentioned as prisons to house the terrorists are Camp Pendleton, California, Standish, Michigan, and Leavenworth Prison, Kansas. Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-CA) pointed out to NewMajority that a similar facility to Pendleton in Mirimar, CA, held illegal detainees which turned into an absolute disaster. A riot broke out and the facility had to be locked down. He stated that “we already had an experiment where foreign nationals were moved into one of our military bases and our brigs were not designed to handle that.”
Bob and Shirley Hemenway who live in Kansas and lost their son at the Pentagon on 9/11 were concerned that Americans do not understand the ramifications of bringing the terrorists to American territory. They pointed out that Leavenworth is not a maximum security prison and logistically it is unsafe because it is surrounded by an airport, military housing, and a lake. They anxiously stated that a terrorist cell could have “easy access to the prison and Americans need to understand this real threat.”
The prison in Standish, Michigan is also being considered. In August, Congressman Pete Hoekstra held a town hall meeting to discuss this issue. He stated that the crowd there was “overwhelmingly in favor of keeping them (the terrorists) in Gitmo. This is gaining momentum. I think the president is going to be forced to realize moving them to the continental U.S. is a bad idea. The people don’t support it.”
There is also the danger of mixing the terrorist population and the general criminal element. Senator James Inhofe feels that “the prisons holding them will become magnets for extremists.” LAPD Chief Bratton concurs and stated to NewMajority that “a significant number of prisoners have been recruited to become radical jihadists. It has become a frequent source of problems.”
Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff who recently wrote a book about the future challenges to homeland security commented to NewMajority that a real fear is the ability of terrorists in American prisons communicating to the outside world. He stated that he saw it happen with organized criminal groups. He explained that “you pretty much have to build a facility that keeps them separated from each other so they cannot communicate, plan, and act in concert… It’s not an imaginary danger, it’s a real danger.”
All those interviewed agree that without a game plan in place the terrorists should not be moved to American soil. There is widespread agreement with Congressman Hoekstra’s opinion that bringing terrorists to America will allow them “more access to rights only guaranteed to United States citizens.“ Congressman Tom Rooney (R-FL) commented to NewMajority that the detainees should not be brought to America because “we are in the shadow world of terrorists who are not conventional combatants.”
By moving detainees to the United States a considerable cost will be incurred to restructure the existing detention facilities. Congressman Rooney points out that since a lot of money was spent in making Guantanamo Bay a state of the art prison America should keep the detainees there. He does not support the Obama administration’s view that Guantanamo must be closed because of the stigma associated with it. He stated to NewMajority that “stigmas can be changed but it takes leadership to do it. The president should display the leadership needed to soothe the concerns of the international community.”
The Obama administration should not be obsessed with closing Guantanamo Bay. President Obama’s responsibility is to ensure the safety and security of Americans. As Congressman Bilbray noted “Gitmo is surrounded on three sides by bodies of water and the terrorists should not be moved to densely urban areas which could threaten the surrounding population. It’s not a theoretical problem it’s a real problem.” Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VI) told NewMajority that “the Obama administration has not provided the answers as to how we are going to protect American citizens. It makes no sense as to why the President wants to close that facility.” Former Secretary Chertoff’s bottom line is that the Obama administration should not close Guantanamo Bay without a well thought out plan. He explained that “there needs to be a lot of careful planning and consideration about what the options are if someone is going to close it… or if you are actually importing a problem into the United States.”
rbottoms // Sep 4, 2009 at 5:24 pm
If we give all foreign fighters Miranda rights, they won’t stay even one day in a U.S. jail. Their lawyers will get them sprung on the grounds that our soldiers violated their rights.
Is there some defect in logic that allows conservatives to present such ridiculous hypotheticals as possible? No, it must be deliberate calculation.
You pull that trick Republicans do so well of feigning ignorance of the Geneva Convention and the Laws of Land Warfare, opting for political gain by spinning to the public the fear that they will end up in one of those Law & Order episodes where the bad guy walks.
Setting foot on American soil will not trigger Miranda and you know it.
Guantanamo needs to be closed because it was used as a dodge to avoid adhering to the conventions, the same ones that have keep our POW’s pretty safe for sixty years btw.
You must believe every detainee that was sent there was guilty when in fact many were, quite a few were people turned in for reward money and for revenge against rival tribesmen. Like the unlikely cabdriver Dilwar who was beaten to death at Bhagram Airbase, there have been and are innocent men among the guilty.
Like the Canadian Maher Arar who we snatched off the street to bee tortured in a Syrian jail others have been snatched up on little to no evidence. And what evidence we do have against other detainees we can’t use it because we used torture to get it.
So while it may serve the purpose of winning elections to contend that Obama is going free the detainees to run down to Seven-Eleven for a Slurpee, it’s still flat out lying for political gain.
But then we’re talking about the GOP, so how is that a surprise.
jreb // Sep 4, 2009 at 8:32 pm
We already have a Supermax prison called Guantanamo Bay staffed by military personnel who have been specifically trained in dealing with enemy military combatants.
We also have provisions for a fair trial for alien enemy military combatants called military commissions which have been used successfully in most Americans wars since the Revolutionary War. They are meant to balance two competing goals: providing a fair trial for enemies who commit war crimes, and protecting the nation’s military and intelligence interests. Both Attorney General Ashcroft and DHS Secretary Chertoff agreed that the venue of military commissions was the proper avenue for trying alien enemy combatants and that the prerogative to use the military tribunals was entirely a constitutional authority reserved exclusively for the executive branch of government.
The decision to close Gitmo Bay was an ill conceived political campaign issue with no thought given to an alternate detention facility for dangerous Islamic terrorists by both Republican and Democratic candidates. The majority of the American public have adopted a NIMBY policy for transferring the detainees to American soil. Moving the detainees to even a Supermax facility in the states would constitute an unacceptable risk to civilians and a security risk to the military personnel who have maintained custody of the detainees up to this point in time.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 4, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Couldnt agree more jreb.
freetextpal // Sep 4, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Re: sinz54 (post)#19
“A number of these were caught by American troops. Since these Germans were not wearing German uniforms or ID tags, General Eisenhower decided that they were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. And so most of them were given a perfunctory trial–and then shot.”
I like this solution better than the rest. If we are not willing to keep Guantanamo Detention Facility open and give these unlawful enemy combatants a military tribunal, then the alternative should only be to follow Gen. Eisenhower’s wisd0m and put them out of their miseries, and get them out of our hair for good.
We should send a clear message to the world that terrorism and killing Americans is unacceptable, and we will not stand for it. “Interrogators can’t water board dead guys”
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Anyone Who Threatens It”
dubiousraves // Sep 5, 2009 at 1:32 am
From Chris Bodenner on Daily Dish:
I just spent the last 15 minutes trying to find details about the cataclysmic riot she’s referring to, but I came up empty. And what exactly are “illegal detainees”? Were they detained illegally? Is Cooper implying that the military broke the law? (Or simply that Marines at Pendleton can’t handle a bunch of shackled, shell-shocked prisoners from a Navy base called Gitmo?)
“Bob and Shirley Hemenway who live in Kansas and lost their son at the Pentagon on 9/11 were concerned that Americans do not understand the ramifications of bringing the terrorists to American territory. They pointed out that Leavenworth is not a maximum security prison and logistically it is unsafe because it is surrounded by an airport, military housing, and a lake.”
Maybe something has changed since I visited Fort Leavenworth two weeks ago, but that “lake” looks a lot like the Missouri River. And I take “military housing” to mean a “US Army base housing the 705th MP Battalion, an elite detention unit that trained guards at Gitmo.” Also, the prison has about a mile of forest separating it from military housing. In fact, the fort’s old prison – which housed serial killers and rapists as recently as 2002 – was literally in the backyard of my brother’s middle-school girlfriend’s house, 50 feet from her back door. But, to the most painful part of Cooper’s paragraph: the USDB does have a maximum-security unit – it’s famous for being the only prison in the US military to have one.
joedee1969 // Sep 5, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I just read C. Rich’s new book. ” The Conservative Reconstruction Project” and it was right on point with the conservative movement. I sent him an e-mail telling him about this site. He checked it out and wrote me back and said he loved it. He even put it on his blogroll and that guy never puts a whole lot on his link list. He must have love it. Anyway check out this link:
http://americaspeaksink.com/the-conservative-reconstructon-project/
LFC // Sep 5, 2009 at 3:26 pm
This post was just brutally fisked by a guest blogger on Sullvian’s site.
agentprovocateur // Sep 5, 2009 at 5:02 pm
re: rodak // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:09 pm
This is hardly surprising. If I may, here is an analogy even a blowhard can understand. If you enter someone’s home and start trashing the place and personally insulting the owner, is it surprising if the owner eventually throws you out of his house? One would think that some people had learned this lesson already, but apparently not.
rbottoms // Sep 5, 2009 at 5:49 pm
This post was just brutally fisked by a guest blogger on Sullvian’s site.
I’ll summarize: Man up.
NIMBY to the Super-Max! « Blogging with Badger // Sep 6, 2009 at 2:11 am
[...] to the Super-Max! September 6, 2009 — Chris Elsie Cooper has written an article all about the problem of housing terror suspects herein the USA. The article is laughable on [...]
Rodak // Sep 6, 2009 at 7:57 am
re: rodak // Sep 4, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Agentprovocateur–
Nobody said they didn’t understand it. I merely posted Barker’s protest at his request b/c he asked me to do so. I was familiar him at another blog (from which he was also banned.) Shortly after checking this site out for the first time, I saw him excoriating Frum, and left the admonitory comment, “I see that you’re up to your old tricks, Bill.” (Or words to that effect.) Evidently he didn’t take the hint. He does not seem to understand that the guest does not try to show up the host; nor does he presume to choose the party games. Well, I’ve done what I could for the guy. I tend to be a tolerant critter, sometimes to my detriment.
agentprovocateur // Sep 6, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Oh, I wasn’t implying that you didn’t understand it. I was saying that he, the blowhard, apparently doesn’t understand how one should act on a blog, which is why he has been banned from multiple blogs. That’s quite an accomplishment.
jreb // Sep 6, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Ten reasons USDB at Ft Leavenworth is not an adequate substitute for Gitmo (US Senator Pat Roberts-KS after visiting both Ft. Leavenworth and Gitmo):
1. Gitmo Bay, an island facility, inherently limits external threats to prisoners, guards, and those around them from anyone who wants to attack the prison.
2. Security experts estimate that Ft. Leavenworth would need to acquire 2,000 privately-owned acres of land by eminent domain to establish a stand-off zone around the USDB, which is situated near the perimeter.
3. A railway runs through the fort and a major river flows adjacent to it. Local air space by the Kansas City and Leavenworth airports would be restricted to military use only.
4. The USDB itself would have to be modified with a price tag of millions to hold prisoners it was not designed to secure. The USDB is a campus-style facility, prisoners are not totally isolated from one another, allowing communication with other inmates, a significant security concern for incarcerating detainees. Support facilities such as a hospital, court room, and additional military police facilities would have to be built. Leavenworth is the only maximum security facility in the Armed Forces, and of the 500 spaces available, only 85 are for maximum security use.
5. By law, military prisoners cannot be held with the terrorists they fight on the battlefield. If just one terrorist detainee was moved to Ft. Leavenworth, all 450 military offenders currently there would have to be transferred, most likely to Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities.
6. Since not all of the military offenders at the USDB have been discharged from the military, we could expect costly and lengthy legal tactics to fight such a transfer.
7. Relocating Military prisoners to a Federal Bureau Prison removes the ability of the military to fully carry out the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. There would be no facility to house maximum security inmates or carry out the death sentence for military inmates potentially undermining the entire military disciplinary system.
8. Military inmates are more disciplined and have a higher rehabilitation rate when serving time at Ft. Leavenworth in comparison to general population prisoners.
9. Security in the community of Leavenworth is, by law, beyond the protection of the Army, which forbids the military from taking on police roles outside of the post. As our enemies work to acquire greater means for inflicting even higher numbers of casualties on Americans, and in an era when extremists routinely seize schools, destroy hospitals, and use civilians as cover, it would be impossible to fully secure the citizens of Leavenworth from outside threats.
10. To achieve the kind of security already available at Gitmo, it will costs millions. The head of the prison worker’s union in Kansas feared for her members and Kansans, should they have to take prisoners off the post for medical treatment. She said, “What will we have to do, transport them in a tank?”.
Rodak // Sep 7, 2009 at 6:36 am
What is to prevent the terrorists from seizing a school in Ohio with the demand of a release and safe transportation to a willing Muslim country of men being detained at Gitmo? What is needed here is simply courage, and an understanding that al Qaeda training does not turn a rickety hod-carrier of the casbah into a Masked Avenger with superhuman powers. Americans put too much credulity into their viewing of Spiderman flicks. For heaven’s sake–grow a set.
agentprovocateur // Sep 7, 2009 at 8:36 pm
re: rodak // Sep 7, 2009 at 6:36 am
Indeed. While it has become fashionable among certain conservatives to try to paint liberals as “weak” or “soft on terrorism” it appears that those who are so terrified about housing terrorists and terrorist suspects on U.S. soil are showing themselves to be the real weaklings.
EscapeVelocity // Sep 7, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Well, then those courageous strong Obama voters should have no problem with taking the Gitmo detainees then. They should have full confidence in their Leftwing Judges.
Has anybody in Europe volunteered to help dismantle Gitmo? Or did eveyone sneering down their noses disappear when it came time to do grown up things? They have been talking about being world powers and leaders but they cant even help dismantle Gitmo? LOL!
Once the CIA is destroyed by the Obama Administration then having those former agents testify in open court should be a piece of cake. Im sure that they want to be on the top of Islamic Thugs target lists, espcially without the backing of the CIA and Federal Government. Perhaps the US will try the CIA agents instead….that will show the people how strong the Obama Adminstration is.
Implosion 2010 and 2012…
Rodak // Sep 8, 2009 at 7:10 am
Has anybody in Europe volunteered to help dismantle Gitmo?
Why should they?