 Gitmo |
Closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention center for terrorism suspects as President-elect Barack Obama has planned would be to invite throat-slitting inmates into the United States, according to a delegation from a soldier-support organization that visited the Cuba facility.
“Some members of our tour group including Miss Florida 2007 and our executive director, Catherine Moy, were given hand gestures by the terrorists like they would slit their throats if they could get to them,” Melanie Morgan, chairman of Move America Forward, told WND today.
“What really offends me is the talk from Barack Obama’s upcoming administration that he wants to close the prison,” she continued.
“He better
go down there and take a look at the facilities – and read the menus and
look at the movie library – before he makes rash decisions that will
endanger American lives,” she said.
Obama has said he wants to close the detention center for terrorists within two years of becoming president. He told Time magazine he wants to restore the balance between the security needs of the nation and the Constitution.
His plans have drawn a rebuke from Vice President Dick Cheney, who said he doesn’t see how Guantanamo can be closed responsibly until the nation’s war on terror is completed.
But Obama, speaking to Time having been named the magazine’s “person of the year,” said the center has to be closed “in a responsible way.”
Morgan and others on her organization’s Honoring Heroes at the Holidays tour recently visited Guantanamo to offer support to members of the U.S. military serving on duty there.
Delegates were given access to visit the center, and Morgan told WND they found the detainees being held in modern facilities “filled with amenities that most American people could only dream of.”
She said inmates are given their choice of menus from which to be served and are allowed to reject any fruit that has even a bruise on it. There also are three members of the medical profession, doctors and nurses, for each inmate, she noted.
But the female visitors were required to cover their legs and arms so that the inmates would not object, she said, and the suggestions of the threats were readily visible.
“These are individuals who should never be in an American prison. I would challenge Obama to come to Gitmo personally to see the circumstances, to see how ridiculous is his proposal to bring these men into the United States,” said Morgan.
WND called Obama’s transition office for a comment and was told to submit the request by e-mail. However, a response to the e-mail never arrived.
Moy said,
“I can assure you that these detainees live in comfort. Even the most dangerous are given movie nights if they behave, and they get to sit on an overstuffed couch in a climate-controlled room. It is all too good for people who want to kill us.
“They watch movies weekly, eat a menu of six different diets from which they choose, and they are given every consideration for their religion. The detainees at Guantanamo Bay are treated with kid gloves,” she said.
The MAF delegation noted the word “terrorist” is not spoken inside the detention center.
But Moy reported, “One detainee made motions to me like he was cutting my throat. These are not nice characters. It is imperative that Guantanamo Bay Detention Center stay open, or we risk putting Americans and other innocents in danger.”
Soldiers there told MAF delegates they are weary of hearing politicians condemn their work, because they are diligent in ensuring the Geneva conventions are followed in their treatment of the inmates.
“I went to the Gitmo
detention center and I was stunned. I saw nothing but the highest
professionalism from the men and women of our armed forces, and I expected
no less. Those prisoners are shown too much respect. We visiting women had
to cover our arms and our legs completely so we didn’t offend the radical
Muslim prisoners,” Morgan reported.
Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee, whose son, Marc Alan Lee, was the first Navy SEAL
killed in Iraq, said what she saw in the inmates “revealed the dark depravity of their souls and hatred towards the ‘infidels.'”
The delegation reported the inmates “get prayer rugs, prayer caps, prayer beads and brand new
Qurans. The guards may never touch the Qurans. Only a Muslim may deliver the
books to the terrorists. If the terrorists are especially good, they get a
fancier prayer rug.”
Inmates also are given art classes, taught English and have games, including soccer, chess, checkers and exercise machines. They also have a foosball table, but the plastic faces on the playing figures have been cut off because the terrorists objected to “false idols.”
The MAF tour in support of U.S. troops was part of its campaign to send care packages to military service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The detainees here are given better
medical care than our troops who are serving in Guantanamo Bay,” said Moy. “It makes me
wonder if President-elect Obama has ever been to the detainee centers or if
he’s just listening to radicals who have never seen the prison with their
own eyes.”
There are about 250 suspects at the facility.
Morgan just a few days ago addressed some of the concerns over Gitmo in a column published on WND.
“Whiners on the left have complained about the Bush administration’s use of Gitmo and some of the interviewing techniques used on the terrorists held in the Cuba prison. Even President Bush said in 2005 he might close Gitmo. It was a weak moment. Cheney has held the line, saying the prison is appropriate for the terrorists who started a war with the United States in earnest when they launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,” she wrote.
“The base at Guantanamo is a perfect place for terrorists. In fact, it’s too good. The weather is nice, the prisoners eat better than they did in the caves of Afghanistan, and they have government-issued Qurans and prayer rugs. Most importantly, these beasts aren’t out plotting another 9/11 or trying to kill Americans or other innocents,” she said.
In her column, she cited the statistic that inmates at Gitmo on average gain 15 pounds.
“The United States has even had to buy them bigger pants because they got so fat on their Gitmo meals,” she wrote.
