Mike Huckabee Has Praise For Guantanamo Prison

On Suday’s NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’ Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Guantanamo Bay was, “a major problem for America’s perception” and said, “if it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo, not tomorrow, this afternoon.” The next day on CNN’s Late Edition Mike Huckabee disagreed with Powell. Huckabee told Wolf Blitzer, “I know it’s become a symbol of what’s wrong. I visited Guantanamo just about a year ago. My sense was, because I visited every single prison in the Arkansas prison system, and 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.” Blitzer pushed Huckabee a bit more and mentioned it wasn’t really the condition of the prison that upsets people, but that, “These suspected terrorists, these detainees are being held, by and large, without charges, without any evidence. They’re just being kept there indefinitely. And that’s causing a smear on the U.S. reputation.” Huckabee responded, “I understand that. 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.” During the debate Huckabee even called for doubling Guantanamo. Of all the things to rally around Huckabee has chosen Guantanamo. People that are calling to close Guantanamo are not wanting to turn the prisoners lose. As Powel said, he “would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system.” The Center for American Progress has suggested we move them to Fort Leavenworth, KS, and prosecute the remaining detainees in general courts-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Huckabee is using fearmongering instead of finding solutions to problems facing America when he suggests that others just want to turn those prisoners lose. Guantanamo has tarnished the United States reputation through out the rest the world and needs to be closed. Huckabee needs to open his eyes to this and stop praising Guantanamo as some type of model prison.
Alan Cosgrove