Posted by: Staff in Strong National Defense on
May 20, 2009
Last Friday, Senator Ensign went to the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay to tour the detainee facilities and receive a briefing on detainee policy.
After touring the detainee facilities, Senator Ensign concluded that it would be irresponsible to bring the detainees to American soil:
After seeing firsthand the facilities at GITMO, it is unnerving to imagine housing these detainees on American soil.
Guantanamo Bay is the appropriate location because it has state-of-the-art facilities to detain terrorists and conduct military commissions, as well as the advantages of isolation. Hosting military commissions anywhere without a high level of isolation would make it more difficult to protect the classified information presented. That's why we built a world-class facility at Guantanamo Bay.
If the American people saw all the amenities for the detainees, they would see that detainees receive first-class medical care and have access to a 14,000-book library, Arabic newspapers, USA Today and instructional classes teaching languages, literacy and art. Members of the International Red Cross have complete and open access to detainees whenever they want and without notice.
At GITMO, there are multi-level security facilities, depending on a detainee's behavior. The most common misbehavior is a detainee throwing feces or urine at our troops. Today we visited Camp 7, which is where high-value persons such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others are held. As a way to gather intelligence from these sources, our interrogators used Enhanced Interrogation Tactics, which led to intelligence that saved thousands of American lives.
Senator Ensign pledged to block the closing of the detention facility, if that would result in detainees being brought to American soil:
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.), returning from a trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Friday that Republicans will try to block closing the U.S. prison there and may be successful.
Ensign, who traveled to Cuba with GOP senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mike Johanns of Nebraska, said the party plans to offer "three or four" amendments to the military supplemental funding bill being considered by the Senate next week, and that he believes some of them will pass because Democratic senators are unwilling to accept the possibility of detainees in the U.S.
Thanks to the leadership of Senator Ensign and Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats were forced to join Republicans in opposing bringing known terrorists to the United States.
