Guantanamo headache faces next president

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - The next president will be commander-in-chief of the armed forces; he or she will also likely be warden-in-chief of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The prison, on territory leased from Cuba, holds about 300 men whom the Bush administration considers dangerous enemies of the United States.

On Wednesday morning the justices of the Supreme Court heard 90 minutes of arguments in the latest attempt by Guantanamo prisoners to win their freedom.

As the prisoners and the Bush administration await the court’s decision, which will come by next spring, the presidential contenders must realize that President Bush’s successor will inherit hundreds of detainees.

Even if, by some turnabout in his policy, Bush were to decide to close the Guantanamo prison, two problems would remain for his successor: Should the United States hold the detainees indefinitely and if so, where?

“The question becomes for this country: Where do you put them? There are some people at Guantanamo Bay that were probably captured in  a net thrown too wide, but there are some people at Guantanamo Bay that need to die in jail because they’re so dangerous,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Presidential contenders make pledges
Guantanamo serves as a defining issue in the 2008 race, with the Democratic contenders pledging to close Guantanamo and most of the Republican contenders saying they’d continue using the facility to hold the alleged enemy combatants.

A foreign policy advisor to Sen. Barack Obama, D- Ill., explained his view this way: "Closing Guantanamo would give Obama the credibility to ask our friends and allies to help us deal with this problem by taking those prisoners we wish to transfer under appropriate conditions. Then, Obama would establish a faster and more effective process for assessing the status of detainees."

Video   Court hears appeal Dec. 5: The Supreme Court Wednesday heard arguments on whether prisoners at Guantanamo can challenge their detention. NBC's Pete Williams reports. Nightly News

He said Obama would "prosecute any detainee who has committed crimes and ensure that the trials are conducted with the legal procedures mandated by U.S. law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Geneva Conventions."

Some Democrats — and Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain — say they’d move the detainees to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

That’s the proposal made by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa in a bill which Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Chris Dodd have co-sponsored.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has been less specific as to a new location.

She has co-sponsored a shut-down-Guantanamo bill offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. The Feinstein bill orders the detainees to be moved to an unspecified military or civilian detention facility in the United States.

Feinstein, who has endorsed Clinton for president, said Tuesday, “there aren’t the votes to move it to closure. It takes 60 votes” in the Senate.

Addressing the safety issue
Asked whether her idea of moving the detainees to military or civilian prisons in the United States would make Americans safer, Feinstein replied, “I don’t think it’s a question of safety, I think it’s a question of American principles being carried out. I think Americans are safe if they (the detainees) are in Guantanamo, and I think Americans are safe if they’re in maximum security facilities in the United States."

She added, "We did an inventory and we know there are adequate beds in maximum security military prisons and maximum security federal prisons.”

She mentioned the federal prison in Florence, Colo., as one suitable site for the Guantanamo detainees.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the “Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado, houses offenders requiring the tightest controls.”

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