President Obama’s Plan To Close Gitmo Faces Uphill Battle

President Obama’s Plan To Close Gitmo Faces Uphill Battle By Falana Fray, Freelance Writer

Since President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order in January to close the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he's been confronted with growing opposition from fellow Democrats and the GOP, namely the "trio of pillsbury doughboys now leading the party - Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney" said Frank Rich of The New York Times. Fearing political repercussions if suspected terrorists are relocated to U.S. federal maximum security prisons, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) pulled $80 million in funds requested by the administration to carry out its pledge to close the detention facility within a year. Yet, two years ago, Obey and 143 other Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to President Bush urging that Guantanamo be shuttered and the inmates transferred to military prisons inside the U.S. Why the sudden change? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) explained simply that the U.S. “Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.” And according to House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), “more than 200 of the world’s most dangerous terrorists will be released or transferred from the Guantanamo Bay prison.” On CNN, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), author of a recent amendment banning the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States declared that moving detainees to maximum-security prisons or military bases would make those facilities “magnets to terrorism”. He claimed that the U.S. is “not set up to handle terrorist detainees”. “World’s Dangerous Criminals”? What about homegrown terrorists? Remember Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who, prior to 9/11, carried out the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil that killed 160+ Americans. He was brought to justice, incarcerated and eventually put to death by lethal injection in 2001. He was an American citizen. Another case was the focus of a plot by seven home-grown extremists, ranging in age from 22 to 32 — who were indicted by a federal grand jury in 2006. They sought to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and an FBI building in Miami. At the time, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told a Justice Department news conference: “They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy.” And what about Robert Goldstein, a Jewish podiatrist who plotted to bomb Islamic mosques, Islamic centers and Islamic schools with his wife? Last but not least, Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber ("UNiversity and Airline BOMber"), who earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. From 1978 to 1995 he built bombs in his remote cabin targeting universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23. Designated a "domestic terrorist" by the FBI, Kaczynski is currently serving a life sentence at the supermax federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, also known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies". It is widely considered to be perhaps the most secure prison in the United States. Richard A. Falkenrath, New York City’s deputy police commissioner for counterterrorism, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2007 that “the possibility of a ‘homegrown’ terrorist attack against New York City or any other American city is real and is worsening with time.”

Bear in mind, the prison system in the United States is full of dangerous criminals, including serial killers, murders, gang members, arsonists, sex offenders, drug traffickers, homegrown terrorists and other menaces to society deserving of federal lockup. Here's a little footnote, the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 738 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2005). A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison. That's another story. The issue is not whether the United States has the facilities and capabilities to house GITMO's remaining 241 detainees. Democrats are bothered by the notion that some terrorism suspects will be tried on criminal charges in federal courts on U.S. soil. So if they shouldn't be tried neither on criminal charges in U.S. courts and in military tribunals (although 61.4% agree to trials in military tribunals, according The Economist/YouGov poll), then How?, What? and where? Is it because most of the detainees are Muslim, but in a U.S. court, they would be given the option (operative word "option") of "swearing an oath" or making an affirmation to tell the truth as to the best of their knowledge in a U.S. court. Before the U.S. went half-way across the world waging a "war on terror" under the auspices of spreading democracy in the Middle East, it should have put in place a tribunal for enemy combatants when it rejected calls by the United Nations to send them to the Hague. Terrorism suspects deserve some semblance of due process. Isn't that what the American judicial system is based on, "innocent until proven guilty." Or is it "guilty until proven innocent" in the case of Guantanamo Bay detainees? If Saddam Hussein was put on trial, convicted and put to death in his home country, why not put Iraqi citizen terrorist suspects held in Guantanamo Bay on trial in their home country, or better yet in Guantanamo Bay? According to The Economist/YouGov poll, 61.9% favour holding trials for the terrorist suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, while 49.6% polled the U.S should continue to operating the Guantanamo detention center. The president's critics on the right, Cheney of course, are more concerned that the Obama administration is working to reverse Bush-era policies that he said have kept America safe for more than seven years since 9/11. Really?, If Bush-era policies have kept the U.S. safe to this day, why do some members of Congress disapprove of relocating them to supermax prisons in the most powerful country in the world? Perhaps the U.S. is not that safe after all?