I'm still in a state of shock from the US Senate's 90 – 6 vote against closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and transferring the prisoners (none of whom have been charged with an offence) to prisons on the US Mainland.
Moreover, the Senators' decision was supported by the FBI director Robert Mueller. In his view, Guantánamo detainees could support terrorism if sent to the US. Mueller was concerned about "... individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States... and the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States"
Harry Reid, the Democratic so-called 'leader' in the Senate, spoke for his colleagues. "We don't want them around," he said. "I can't make it any more clear … We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States."
Hello in there, Senators all!!
Don't you remember Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness being welcomed at the White House? Weren't they once also 'terrorists'? What about Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela? Haven't you heard that ex- terrorists frequently become respected elder-statesmen? Come to that, what about 'The Contras', , the cocaine-smuggling terrorists that John Negroponte infiltrated into Nicaragua to burn farms, murder and rape and do horrible crimes in order to disrupt Nicaragua's society and economy on behalf of the Reagan administration?
One of the handful of sane senators, Democrat Dick Durbin, did point that 347 convicted terrorists are already being held in US prisons, but to no avail. Republican Senator John Thune, took his colleagues – and 'The American people' - to the bottom of the barrel with these gems. "The American people don't want these men walking the streets of America's neighbourhoods...The American people don't want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their backyard, either."
As an indicator of the quality of the broad spectrum of political leadership in the USA, this decision and its near-unanimity, is truly appallingly. There was scarcely a debate. The senators threw their skirts over their heads and ran clucking and whimpering from the very thought of having to take responsibility for the terrorists that their decades of near unanimous support for US policies in the Middle East and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine had nourished.
Many other countries, of course, have arrested, tried, imprisoned and later released hundreds of terrorists and terrorist suspects. In the recent past, legislators and law-enforcement bodies in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Holland, to name but a few have managed to deal with this awkward problem without having a collective attack of the vapours that overcame the Senate. (and earlier, the House of Representatives, of course)
Leaving aside the fact that the Senators accept without a qualm the illegal nature of the Guantánamo facility, the mystery of why US legislators and top law-enforcement officers are so craven and pathetic remains?
I have no doubt that 'The American people', like the people of every other country that has to put terrorists and suspected terrorists behind bars, would take the presence of a specialist facility in their stride. So what kind of collective hysteria is it that has reduced their elected representatives and the Director of the FBI to a quivering mass of irrationality?
