Recently, Senator Tom Harkin introduced a bill that requires the Department of Defense to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within 120 days after his bill has been signed into law. The new bill called the “Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Act of 2007.” In the wake of human rights abuses, leaders from both parties have agreed that the continued operation of this military prison has damaged America’s reputation and impeded efforts to fight terrorism and continue to threaten Americans traveling around the world.
Many Americans believe that the US Government by continuing to isolate detainees on Guantanamo Bay without bringing charges against them is illegal or at least in effect forfeiting our moral leadership and hindering our ability to rally support in our fight against terrorism. Closing this facility is our single best opportunity to rally our allies in a more effective fight against terrorism and at the same time reduce the risk to Americans traveling abroad.
Under this new bill the Administration would be required to at long last resolve the legal status of the 386 prisoners currently held at Guantanamo Bay. Those that the Administration intends to charge with a crime or an offense under the Military Commissions Act would be transferred to the United States Detention Base at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a state-of-the-art, maximum security facility. Those that the Administration does not intend to charge with a crime or an offense would be returned to the custody of their home country or, where necessary, returned to a country where they do not face torture.
According to Senator Harkin “the right-wing extremists such as presidential candidate Mitt Romney not only want to keep Guantanamo Bay open-they want to expand it. I firmly believe that this is the wrong course of action and it will only further damage our reputation and our ability to win the war on terror.”
As you may remember Senator Harkin stated “I have long fought to end human rights abuses around the world. In 1970 when I was a young congressional staffer on a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, I helped to discover so-called tiger cages at Con Son Island. In these tiger cages Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners, as well as civilian opponents of the war, were being held, tortured and killed with the full sanction of the U.S. Government.
I stood up then, just as I am standing up now, to bring an end to human rights abuses.”