Gitmo’s Got to Go… but where?

In the face of growing national discontent and an increasingly-complicated legal situation, both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have called for the closing of the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. McCain has suggested moving at least some of the alleged terrorist detainees to Fort Leavenworth. (We need to say ‘alleged’ until we find a way to give these people some kind of a trial or military tribunal that passes constitutional muster.) As pointed out to us by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air today, the two Senators from Kansas are giving this plan the big thumbs down.

“Not all prisons are created equal,” Brownback and Roberts wrote in their appeal. The prison facility at Fort Leavenworth “is not equipped to perform this mission.”

Members of Congress from both parties have long suggested Fort Leavenworth as an alternative to the sprawling prison camp compound in Guantanamo, which today holds 270 war-on-terror captives.

What are the chief complaints regarding such a transfer? Ed points to issues on several fronts.

Leavenworth houses those convicted of serious crimes while in uniform, but these prisoners are not considered national-security risks. The prison has the normal maximum-security safeguards against escape and breakout, but not against the kind of terrorist risk the detainees pose. Leavenworth also doesn’t have the room nor the extra personnel needed to secure the terrorists. The commander also objects to keeping foreign terrorists in close proximity to the American military prisoners already housed there.

Another consideration is medical care. Leavenworth usually transports its prisoners to the hospital in the city, as it lacks medical facilities on the base. Do we want terrorists to get carted out of prison and through American cities to get CAT scans? The potential for escape or sabotage should keep Leavenworth off the list entirely.

As the linked column points out, more (and perhaps sufficient) security could be found, for example, at the Supermax facility in Colorado. But that’s a prison, and you can’t put people in there unless they’ve actually been convicted of a crime. Our “guests” at Gitmo have, for the most part, not even been charged with anything, to say nothing of convicted. They remain in a legal black hole of our own making because of our insistence on following this course of naming them “enemy combatants” rather than either criminals or prisoners of war. The endless court battles which have played out continue to demonstrate that we didn’t think this strategy through from the beginning and now it’s simply falling apart.

But Ed is still asking a very valid question… if we’re going to close Gitmo down, what to do with them? Improve Leavenworth to minimize the risks of holding them there? Release them to possibly return to the fields of battle and attack us? Ship them off to “black site” facilities in other nations, making them “somebody else’s problem” for now? Or do we consider the most horrifying prospect of all – actually charging them with something, giving them a day in some form of court and punishing them if they are really guilty? Crazy talk, I know, but still…