Bush team said to be split over closing Guantanamo

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Some Bush administration officials want to close the facility to end a debate over allegations of prisoner abuse, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told "Fox News Sunday." <snip>

"I think they're divided. I think ... some members of the White House have come to the conclusion that the legend is different than the fact," said Hunter, a California Republican.

"And when that's the case, you go with the legend that somehow Guantanamo has been a place of abuse. And you close it down and you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate and you get if off the table and you move on," he said. <snip>

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/12/bush_team_split_over_closing_guantanamo__lawmaker/


Lawmakers Say Support Building for Review of Guantanamo Camp

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Support is building for congressional hearings into whether operation of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center for terrorism suspects is damaging the reputation of the U.S. abroad and should be closed, Republican and Democratic lawmakers said.

``We need to look at this issue thoroughly,'' Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' program. He joined Senators Joseph Biden, a Democrat, and Chuck Hagel, a Republican, in endorsing a review of Guantanamo that would determine whether it should be shut. <snip>

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aKnKFV0F7uc8&refer=us


I dunno ... I were jest startin to think the place might could be real useful, if only we'd try puttin the right folk into it fer a change: ya know, like senators what threatens judges, and talkshow hosts what uses the public's airwaves to call fer cold-blooded murder ...

[Solly Mack]

1. Rendition

That America is a nation of torture won't go away just because Gitmo is shut down.

[Catch22Dem]

2. They think closing it will end debate over allegations of prisioner abuse?

On what fucking planet does that make sense?

[Jack Rabbit]

3. There are about forty detention facilities in the neocons' gulag network

There have been over a hundred deaths reported of detainees in US custody at these facilities, but none at Guantanamo.

Guatanamo does not need to be shut down. The detention facilities need to start adhering to the Geneva Convention and they need to be open to international inspections.

[Demeter]

4. LEGEND!!!!

First "legend" I ever heard of that came with Candid Camera!

[struggle4progress]

6. Perhaps anti-American traitors like Hunter belong in Camp X-Ray. eom

[Jack Rabbit]

7. It's from a classic motion picture

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) by John Ford.



In the film, US Senator James Stewart's political career was launched when he killed a local cattle baron tyrant named Liberty Valence (Lee Marvin) one night in a gunfight in which Stewart appeared to be badly outmatched. Years later, Stewart returns home from Washington to attend the funeral of his old friend, John Wayne, a rancher who died alone and forgotten. At the funeral, Stewart tells a newspaper editor the real story: that it was Wayne who actually killed Liberty Valence by firing a shotgun from the shadows across the street.

Upon hearing the story, the newspaper editor tears up his notes, much to Stewart's astonishment. "You mean you're not going to print that?" Stewart protests.

"No," says the editor. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Lee Marvin, John Wayne and James Stewart (rear) in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
from The Poetic Vision of John Ford

[chknltl]

5. The debates on c-spin always have a caller who states:

:"But those are terrorists, they are treated far better than they treat our guys when captured!" The callers usually go on to talk about the be-headings done to prisoners by the terrorists, those same terrorists we wish to protect down in Gitmo.
My response to them: I am ashamed to call you my fellow American.
Any American who feels that America is above the law, for any reason is wrong. Is that how you were raised? Is that how you raise your children? How can you take pride in your country when it stoops to the level of the criminal in order to resolve its' perceived problems.
You guys claim Saddam needed to be brought to justice for his "Crimes against Humanity" now you advocate we act like Saddam? Who will bring us to task for our Crimes against Humanity? Make no mistake about we have committed them. rant over :grr: