Close Guantanamo

By TChris, Section Terror Detainees
Posted on Sun Jun 10, 2007 at 10:12:12 PM EST
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Here's Colin Powell making sense.

"If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I'd close it," he said.
"And I would not let any of those people go," he said. "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?"

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"I would also do it because every morning, I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds," Powell said. "And so essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.
"We don't need it, and it's causing us far more damage than any good we get for it," he said.

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Close Guantanamo | 6 comments (6 topical)

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Where's the apology for your long silence? (5.00 / 3) (#1)
by profmarcus on Sun Jun 10, 2007 at 10:38:45 PM EST

good on you, colin... the road to redemption is long and hard, and i s'pose you gotta start somewhere... but i'm still left with the question as to why the hell you didn't open your yap when all this stuff was going down...

And, yes, I DO take it personally

GITMO (none / 0) (#2)
by diogenes on Sun Jun 10, 2007 at 11:58:57 PM EST

What exactly would the legal authority be for bringing people from Afghanistan and putting them into the US legal system? Isn't there a set of rules that apply to enemy combatants who are not part of an formal army? I doubt that trials in the civilian system are part of that.

: Easy answers to silly questions (5.00 / 2) (#3)
by Repack Rider on Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 02:48:06 AM EST

What exactly would the legal authority be for bringing people from Afghanistan and putting them into the US legal system?
Is there an "authority" that allows us to capture people and hold them without charges and without doing anything to discover whether there is a reason they should be held?
Isn't there a set of rules that apply to enemy combatants who are not part of an formal army?
You mean, like the Geneva Convention? Yes. It's called the Geneva Convention.
I doubt that trials in the civilian system are part of that.
I doubt that anything in the system of American justice says we can hold people indefinitely without charges and without justifying in any way their imprisonment. This principle is the foundation upon which all of our law rests. It was established by the Magna Carta in 1215 a.d. and is called habeas corpus.

Better late than never, I guess (none / 0) (#4)
by HK on Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 04:19:58 AM EST

Colin is right. Let's hope he picks up the phone and tells Monkey Boy, because none of the White House yes-men (and women) seem willing to.

War criminal in four wars (none / 0) (#5)
by Domino on Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 07:00:25 AM EST

Do not forget the crimes Powell committed in four wars (Viet Nam, Panama, Gulf War, Iraq War.)

It is too late for him to get into heaven.

Powell gets another pass (none / 0) (#6)
by aj12754 on Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 08:47:15 AM EST

So because Powell finally says the right thing about Guantanamo, the media and a lot of the blogosphere will give him a pass on his ongoing repetition of the lie that "the intelligence was wrong". It was not wrong. The caveats on the case for war were there for all to see and they had been provided by the CIA, the INR, the DIA and the DOE, not to mention the IAEA and the German and French intelligence services. The administration chose to use only the intelligence that supported their position and to ignore everything that did not support them. The administration, including Powell, was wrong. Not the intelligence.