Colin Powell: Close Gitmo Now

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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell held his tongue for four years during his tenure as the Bush Administration’s chief foreign policy officer, faithfully toeing the party line when he was asked to do so. It was Powell who made the now infamous Iraq war presentation in front of the U.N. Security Council, forcefully declaring the case for war. Of course, the evidence in that presentation has turned out to be nearly universally false and as a result Powell’s credibility has been forever damaged. While it is not certain how much he knew was false before he gave the speech, all indications are that he considers it the low point of his political career, as he told Barbara Walters in 2005.
“…It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now.”
Still, Powell’s resignation from Bush’s cabinet does not mean he’s given up political posturing altogether. Two years ago he called two Senators to voice his opposition to the nomination of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN. Today, he formally opposed another hot-button Bush project: the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"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?"
It is indeed what our system is about, Mr. Powell, but try telling that to President W.

It’s unclear whether Powell’s remarks come as an attempt to atone for past sins or as an earnest attempt to speak out about important matters of state. It is however very clear that Powell has not lost his grasp on the concept of international relations.
"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.
Seems like a pretty basic principle of diplomacy. When you’re trying to present yourselves as the world’s leader on freedom and democracy, it comes off extremely hypocritical to gleefully suspend the rights of others in a systematic fashion. Still, some others on the right just aren’t getting it.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he believes the prison should remain open.

"It's more symbolic than it is a substantive issue, because people perceive of mistreatment when, in fact, there are extraordinary means being taken to make sure these detainees are being given, really, every consideration," said Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor.

"But I'll tell you, if we let somebody out and it turns out that they come and fly an airliner into one of our skyscrapers, we're going to be asking, how come we didn't stop them? We had them detained," Huckabee said.

"I can tell you, most of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo and less like the state prisons that people are in in the United States," he said.
Huckabee’s remarks are predictably moronic. I guess “every consideration” does not include stuff like access to attorneys. That would be going above and beyond, I suppose. And while I’m sure he’s right that the treatment the Gitmo detainees receive is super peachy keen, his argument that we should keep them in Guantanamo because otherwise they’ll be flying planes into buildings is total hogwash. If they are criminals, they can be convicted of crimes. If they are not criminals, they should be let free. As Powell said, that is indeed what our system is about.

Liberals, like myself for example, like to blame the Bush Administration for a lot of stuff. Usually, we’re justified in doing so. Powell’s comments today and Huckabee’s response to them made me think of something else we can righteously pin on Bush: were it not for the warmongers in the White House enlisting Powell as their invasion salesman four years ago, we might now have a Republican presidential candidate that knows their ass from a hole in the ground. Instead, they ruined his career.

Thanks, Bush Administration. You dickholes.

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