Gates: Guantanamo "Taint" On U.S. Reputation

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because "the name itself is a condemnation" of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy. In an interview broadcast Friday on NBC's "Today" show, Gates called the facility on the island of Cuba "probably one of the finest prisons in the world today." But at the same time, he said it had become "a taint" on the reputation of America.
Gates has served both President George W. Bush and now Barack Obama at the Pentagon. In an interview taped Thursday aboard the retired World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the defense secretary said that once the decision was made to close Guantanamo, "the question is, where do you put them?" He said Obama would do nothing to endanger the public and said there has never been an escape from a "super-max" prison in this country.
Of criticism the president's plan would jeopardize people's safety, Gates said: "I think that one of the points ... was that he had no interest whatsoever in releasing publicly detainees who might come back to harm Americans."
Gates said that "we have many terrorists in United States' prisons today," and he decried "fear-mongering about this." LinkHere

Abu Ghraib Ties To Gitmo Shown By DOJ Memos

Yesterday, in his remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, former Vice President Dick Cheney protested that everyone had Abu Ghraib all wrong!
In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib with the top-secret program of enhanced interrogations.
At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulation, and simple decency. For the harm they did to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice.
And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men. But maybe there has been a "willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib with the top-secret program of enhanced interrogations," precisely because the two things are infinitely conflatable! Dan Froomkin takes on the issue in a report on Nieman Watchdog today and finds that Cheney's words just don't comport to observable reality: LinkHere