why did Rep. Tom Lantos stick up for Gitmo?

[donsu]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Netherlands-Guantanamo.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


Dutch Lawmakers Offended by Rep. Lantos


Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that ''Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.''

Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peters, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took notes of the remarks.

-snip-

(here Lantos gives them a threat)

Before the Guantanamo exchange, the lawmakers had discussed a debate in the Netherlands about whether the country should maintain its 1,600 troops serving in NATO's Afghanistan operations.

''You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany,'' Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.

-snip-

It was not the first time that Lantos had offended European political circles. In May, he lashed out at the former leaders of France and Germany. His comments, which included calling former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a ''political prostitute,'' provoked a rebuke from German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
-snip-
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does Lantos wear sheep's clothing?