ATTORNEY General Eric Holder toured Guantanamo Bay this week, a "fact finding" visit prompted by President Obama's "close Gitmo" order.Eric Holder, racial coward, doesn't care about any of that. It's all about living in the fantasy world of having people love us.
One wonders if his eyes were open to the facts on the ground - given Holder's evident conflict of interest.
Holder's previous job, after all, was as a senior partner with Covington and Burling - a white-shoe DC law firm that devotes considerable pro bono time to defending the Gitmo detainees. The job paid $2 million a year, and he expects to collect a like amount this year as part of his separation package.
As a senior partner, he undoubtedly had significant input on what kind of charity cases his firm picked up. He surely knew that dozens of lawyers from from his firm were among the 500-plus civilian lawyers representing the 244 or so remaining detainees (on top of military-court-appointed defenders).
Even now, his Covington colleagues continue to allege rampant torture at Gitmo. They're fighting hard to have detainees tried through the US court system - essentially given the same rights as US citizens. And their arguments and plans hinge largely on having Holder issue a bad report card.
Recent polls indicate that at least half of Americans disagree with affording the detainees legal rights on US soil. Will they have the same access to Holder's ears as his former colleagues do?
Will the people that Holder recently called a "nation of cowards" on racial issues be prepared to handle the truth from Gitmo - that, aside from three isolated cases of abuse in fall 2002, treatment at Gitmo has been transparent and exemplary?
If he tells the truth, Holder will report back that detainees are treated far more humanely and safely than in most US prisons - and are accorded religious respect in the form of individual Korans, prayer beads and orange cones in hallways during prayer time to remind US guards to speak softly.
He'll tell the president that the amount of actionable intelligence information flowing from Guantanamo is significant, has thwarted attacks on America and broken up sleeper cells here and in Europe. And that such intelligence gives us the tools to intercept al Qaeda money-laundering and cash transfers, defeat improvised explosive devices and disrupt terrorist recruiting and organizing.
All while they plot our destruction, aided and abetted by those in our own government.
Change!
Sadly, Holder and Obama are getting their marching orders from the ACLU and the MoveOn.org bunch.
It has become an article of faith among the MoveOn.org crowd and the Democratic Party's liberal base to denounce Guantanamo as a symbol of inhumane treatment and torture. (Indeed, in his address to Congress on Tuesday, the president announced the closing of Guantanamo in the same paragraph in which he said "that is why I can stand here tonight and say . . . the United States of America does not torture.")it would serve Obama and Holder well to remember a certain annoversary. Do they want to allow our enemies to roam free again?
Yet that symbolism doesn't square with the real Gitmo.
Detainees at Guantanamo are treated far better than most American prisoners in the US jails and prisons I've inspected over the years. The unfounded accusations that are so regularly and cavalierly made about Guantanamo are a slander against the brave men and women of our armed forces, who perform their duties at that facility so professionally and under such duress.
If there's any scandal at Guantanamo, it is that the detainees are treated too well.
...
We are at war with Islamic terrorism. Gitmo is a major front in that war. Closing Guantanamo could well mean releasing deadly Islamic terrorists overseas or bringing them to American soil. It would be craven surrender to left-wing groups and uninformed, self-righteous world opinion. We must do all we can to convince President Obama to reverse his decision.
Apparently so.
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