New Prison May Have To Be Built, Gates Says (Washington Digest / WaPo)

[struggle4progress]

Friday, May 1, 2009
DETAINEES
New Prison May Have To Be Built, Gates Says

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that the Pentagon may have to build a new facility to house detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, to hedge against political opposition around the country to the incarceration of the inmates in existing federal or military facilities in the United States.

"I fully expect to have 535 pieces of legislation before this is over saying, 'Not in my district, not in my state,' " Gates said, referring to the number of senators and representatives in Congress. He said the Pentagon wants to have $50 million at hand in case it has to build a prison on short notice ...

"The question is: What do we do with the 50 to 100 -- probably in that ballpark -- who we cannot release and cannot try?" Gates said at a Senate hearing. That raises the prospect of detention without a trial or of military tribunals to use evidence that would not be admitted in federal court or military courts-martial. Such evidence might include raw intelligence that would not meet rules of evidence standards or is tainted because it was obtained from coercive interrogations.

Gates said military commissions, or a modified version of such trials, "are very much still on the table."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043004068.html

[bluestateguy]

1. Stick it in the reddest district in the reddest state in America

There need to be consequences for voting the wrong way.

[struggle4progress]

2. The "build a new prison" line, of course, means "tempt them with new construction and guard jobs"

[EFerrari]

3. Of course. And if he gives the management contract to a private company

then the prison lobby will make it happen. USA! USA!

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Wyoming--Dick Cheney's back yard. n/t

[ixion]

4. "who we cannot release and cannot try"

That is crap of the highest degree. Cannot try? Why is that, sir?

It is crap. You cannot 'try' them because they've committed no crime, and you have no case. And yet you still feel obligated to imprison them.

This is embarrassing and intolerable, IMO.

[tkmorris]

5. I agree with you

If you cannot try them you are OBLIGATED to release them. That's the deal.

[ColbertWatcher]

7. Good point, and doesn't that seem a little presumptuous of him?

I mean I know they're not Americans, but without a trial/tribunal, he already knows that innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply here?

[RC]

8. Cannot try. Translation: We just rounded up a bunch of Innocent people and tortured them.