Political Quotes

“Guantanamo continues to be a damaging reminder of a failed U.S. strategy that sought to put captured terrorists beyond the reach of the law and the U.S. courts. A dozen years ago the Bush administration started sending detainees to Gitmo in large part out of a desire to avoid the jurisdiction of the United States courts and ensure that detainees would have no legal avenue to appeal their convictions. Now, whether or not one supported that approach, that argument ended in 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Boumediene case that Gitmo detainees would be treated as being inside the United States for the purpose of habeas corpus appeals. Instead of recognizing the problems with maintaining the Gitmo facility--the problems of extreme costs, and that it adds no additional security to what exists if these people are brought to the United States for military trial, as being held as prisoners under the laws of war, or for Federal court trial, even though all of that is still possible inside the United States--we have enacted legislation which makes it virtually impossible to move detainees anywhere else, ensuring that the facility is going to remain open whether we need it or not. The result is that we are stuck with an expensive facility. And make no mistake, the costs of the Guantanamo detention facility are exorbitant. The Department of Defense has put the costs associated with Gitmo at over $400 million a year. That is more than $2.5 million per detainee.…”