Terrorists in Prison: is there anything the Right doesn't fear?

"The "debate"
over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes
Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons
is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse
that it's hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the
steps that typically lead to America's National Security policies"

Good article!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/20/guantanamo/

240 terrorists

80 million to close the jail

uh... what?
how can it cost so damn much to close the jail?

I thought Obama said he was going ot close Guantanamo, wheres the debate?

What do you do with the prisoners? Who wants to take people that are/were terrorists, or who have become terrorists because of the treatment at Gitmo? (I mean other than the Liberal Party?)

Who want's to take child molesters, rapists, hardcore criminals, serial killers...psychopaths? Yet they somehow managed to keep them in jail with out issue....how do you think that's possible?

How is that ANY DIFFERENT?

If they commit crimes in our country, it's our problem. Why should we be stuck with keeping foreign terrorists in our jails? There's a huge difference imo. Huge.

Perception is really what it is all about. And seriously, how long would a single one of these guys last in prison genpop or in protective custody before a door was accidently left unlocked?

Any inmate who offed one of these "terrorists" would pretty much be set for LIFE in prison.

JTF wrote:If they commit crimes in our country, it's our problem. Why should we be stuck with keeping foreign terrorists in our jails? There's a huge difference imo. Huge.

They committed crimes against your/our/their country...so what's the difference? Send them to trial, and give them a sentence. So long as they are locked up with the rest of the criminals, who cares?

Next, you'll be trying to tell me that the prisoners in jail don't want convicted terrorists serving hard time in a cell next to them...meanwhile they them selves are serving time for eating the brains of one of their victims.

Well, why don't we just become the world's prison then?

If you want to pay to upkeep these bastards, go for it, but keep your hands out of my pockets.

The U.S. is already imprisoning more than anyone else...what's a few more?

What does paying to upkeep the bastards in a regular supermax prison compare to keeping them offshore, in a separate camp? I bet it's huge!

If anything, they'd be saving money!

JTF, I dont think the 80 million was going to be bringing them all to Canada... so like JT asks... whats the difference between America paying more to keep them in Cuba and America paying to keep them in American prisons?

I'm not speaking of them keeping their prisoners. I'm speaking of us keeping their prisoners.

well thats not what JT is speaking about

No one is suggesting that Canada keep the U.S.'s prisoners....check out the article....

I have been listening to the debate thank you very much, and frankly, it gets down to what to do with the prisoners. Where do they go?

Put them in Prisons in New York
heh screw the prisons, just put out a media release to the public saying exactly where in New York you will be dropping them all of and at exactly what time.

Heh heh...problem solved....at no cost to the taxpayer.

Now, are these folks actually convicted of a crime under whatever US laws, or are these the detainees from Iraq/Afghanistan, who, in the good old days, would be Prisoners of War and held according to the articles of the Geneva Convention, but aren't cause its sort of really not a war?

Can you imagine if this type of crap was followed in WWII, when German U boat crews were captured and detained in Canada? How many of them killed or tried to kill Allied soldiers and sailors? No trials, just hold them until its over. Some even stayed after the war, and some came back to visit the families that they worked with as labourers while the husbands/sons were serving.

As I understand it, these are the over two hundred or so "limbo" detainees....all the detainees who were brought to trial and found guilt were sentenced to jail time inside the U.S. and are there right now, as we speak.

"Convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui has been held in a Supermax near Florence, Colorado since 2006. So far, Colorado has not been destroyed."

Interesting WW2 reference:

"the American government set up an array of prisoner of war camps throughout the United States.
I can't even imagine how our current batch of frightened Republicans,
Reid Democrats and cable news pundits would've reacted to the fact that
there were 425,000 -- nearly half a million -- Nazi and Axis prisoners
held on American soil and within roughly 600 different prisons."

Link to source of quoted text: Here

the reality is though, that was a completely different sort of war.

Alot of the prisoners in WWII were just glad that they finally had some food and a good chunk of them never really believed in the war anyway. Where as alot of these prisoners, well they are willing to do almost anything because their god told them to.

Yeah, that was a war that was actually declared....as where this one wasn't/hasn't.

And instead of willing do to almost anything because their god told them to, in WW2, they were willing to do almost anything because their Fuhrer/Emperor told them to.

That's about the only difference so far...

Oh wait, I thought of another one.....in that war, "they" (re: the bad guys) tortured and thus were tried and convicted of war crimes.

", they were willing to do almost anything because their Fuhrer/Emperor told them to. "

Are we talking about American soldiers in IRAQ?

This is a pretty different situation. I think the term 'war on terror' was carefully chosen because it sounds good but doesn't actually mean anything. Really it's trying to stop enough people from supporting certain groups (both directly or financially or logistically) so that they can only do very limited damage. You'll never wipe out certain lines of thinking but you can limit their support enough to make them no longer a real danger. But you can't really do that through typical military means.
Okay, so you have a few hundred people locked up who may be able to provide outdated information. But how does that compare to the amount of support their groups have received because of the existance of the prison? Maybe they've only recieved 5 people worth of support while 300 are held, so it would be a net gain of 295. But maybe they have recieved 1000 worth of support. Hard to say. But that's the issue with keeping the place open. Is it actually helping or are they just making the problem worse? If some good information was obtained through torture, is that information good enough to offset the backlash once word of the torture gets out? Not like it's just a few guys in a clubhouse and once you get someone to tell you where that clubhouse is you can take care of them. What concerns me is that everytime Cheney give another interview saying it's good they tortured people, I can't help but think that he's just provided more amazing PR for these organizations to use for recruiting or fundraising purposes.

Anyway, back to the original question, or at least sort of. Is it right/correct/proper to put "terrorists" in the usual prisons? My take would be that they have to have been convicted of something and sentenced. Even those convicted of treason are held in federal institutions. If these are "detainees", then thats another issue.

There's another tricky issue that will come into play here as well....

Some of these detainees, well, they aren't charged with anything....at all, yet the government claims that they are still dangerous...so they can't be released.

So what to do with them....the "limbo" detainees as it were...