posted on June 11, 2005 08:46:56 PM
GOP senator suggests shutting Gitmo
Martinez joins call for controversial prison’s closure
The Associated Press
KEY WEST, Fla. - Sen. Mel Martinez said the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects — the first high-profile Republican to make the suggestion.
“It’s become an icon for bad stories and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio,” Martinez said Friday. “How much do you get out of having that facility there? Is it serving all the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it, or can this be done some other way a little better?”
Martinez, who served in President Bush’s first cabinet and is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made his comments after Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden suggested earlier in the week that the prison in Cuba be shut down.
President Bush said Wednesday that his administration was “exploring all alternatives” for detaining the prisoners.
Human rights groups and former detainees say prisoners at Guantanamo have been mistreated. The Pentagon said last week that some U.S. personnel there mishandled prisoners’ copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Facility under fire
That disclosure followed a report in Newsweek, later retracted, that U.S. investigators had confirmed that a guard had flushed a prisoner’s Quran in a toilet. The White House blamed that report for violent protests in Muslim nations.
Amnesty International called the facility “the gulag of our time.” Former President Jimmy Carter has also said Guantanamo should be closed.
Martinez, who strongly supported Bush’s efforts in Iraq during his campaign last year, also expressed concerns about progress in the war.
“I am discouraged by how long it has taken for us to begin to draw down some forces,” Martinez said at the annual Florida Society of Newspaper Editors/Florida Press Association convention.
He said he has had to write many condolence letters to the families of Floridians killed in Iraq.
“It brings home the importance of the decision to send men and women to go to war,” he said. “It has become a foreign fighters’ war against us there and the progress seems slow and difficult.”
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
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President George Bush: "Over time the truth will come out."
President George Bush: "Our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind."
Bush was right. The truth did come out and the facts are he misled Congress and the American people about the reasons we should go to war in Iraq.
posted on June 11, 2005 08:49:00 PMPresident Bush said Wednesday that his administration was “exploring all alternatives” for detaining the prisoners.
I hear he is considering reopening Alcatraz or moving the prisoners to the White House Bunker. If he chooses option "B", Bush can deny the existence of the bunker and therefore deny the existence of the prisoners.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
----------------------------------
President George Bush: "Over time the truth will come out."
President George Bush: "Our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind."
Bush was right. The truth did come out and the facts are he misled Congress and the American people about the reasons we should go to war in Iraq.
posted on June 11, 2005 09:02:51 PM
What matrinez is REALLY saying is
"This is getting to be very embarrassing..let's get rid of it and ten minutes later the American public will forget all about it and we can always ship these UNCHARGED prisoners to another country to be tortured."
