Rep. Doug Lamborn, finger firmly in the wind, is sponsoring a bill to prevent Guantanamo detainees from being sent to the Supermax facility in Florence. He has an ally in Democratic Rep. Salazar, who echoes Lamborn's fear of placing military prisoners in federal prisons. Who, exactly, do these two gentlemen think is already housed in Supermax? The list includes some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. If the fear is that Supermax becomes a Qaida target, there are already a dozen or more al Qaida-linked terrorists serving time in Florence. If the worry is that the Guantanamo detainees will recruit other inmates, the roster of prisoners includes plenty of folks who already hate America, including the Unabomber, abortion clinic and Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, not to mention the aforementioned jihadists. Supermax was built expressly to house these folks. I'd sleep much better knowing they were securely housed there than released to other countries for safekeeping.
The most stirring moment of President Obama's inaugural address came when he declared that we do not have to abandon our ideals to protect our nation's security. The most disturbing chapter of the Bush administration soon will end with the closing of Guantanamo and the CIA's notorious secret prisons, and with our abandonment,finally, of the torture of detainees. This disgraceful chapter couldn't end soon enough. I firmly believe that our ultimate safety rests not with the crushing of our enemies by force, but with our steadfast adherence to the higher principles of behavior we are supposed to stand for. The thing the jihadists have most to fear is an America bent on exporting our vision of a democratic, tolerant, inclusive and humane society.
The Torture Report is out, and it tells the story we've long suspected--that the authorization for extreme interrogation techniques came from the highest levels of government. Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales, in particular, signed off on harsh treatment of detainees, despite warnings that what they were authorizing was, in fact, a violation of the Geneva Convention and of our own laws. They listened, instead, to crackpot legal theories put forth by David Addington, assistant to Vice President Cheney and Gonzales, which assigned to the president unprecedented wartime powers to ignore all standards of human decency this nation has subscribed to in war and peace throughout its history. This is one of the saddest chapters in all of American history. We're supposed to be the good guys. We're the good guys because we don't do what the bad guys do. If we do what the bad guys do, then we're the bad guys. You can argue with that, but I'm not listening. I just hope that Obama has the courage to investigate his predecessors and demand not only accountability, but also justice, even if it means putting our nation's war criminals on trial.
