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Time to Close Guantanamo Jail, Durbin Says

Andrew Zajac
Chicago Tribune
July 12, 2006

WASHINGTON - A year after being roasted for inflammatory comments about how U.S. military personnel treated detainees at the GuantanamoBay prison in Cuba, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said he came away from a Monday visit to the facility "with a very positive feeling about what our soldiers are doing."

But he said he remains convinced that the jail ought to be closed.

Durbin said that although he was convinced by his daylong visit that detainees are being treated humanely and in accordance with U.S. and international law, the symbolism of the jail as a center of heavy-handed U.S. treatment of captives outweighs its value as a detention facility.

"Phase it out, close it by the end of the year," the Illinois Democrat said in an interview. "It's such a powerful, negative symbol of the U.S."

The base's 450 prisoners should be transferred to facilities in the United States or, in the case of less dangerous detainees, to their countries of origin, if the U.S. can guarantee their security, he said.

In June 2005, Durbin, citing an FBI agent's account of a Guantanamo detainee "chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," said that if a reader didn't know the identity of the personnel inflicting the abuse, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others. ..."

His remarks touched off a furious reaction stoked by conservative talk radio hosts and bloggers, and Durbin subsequently apologized for impugning service members.

In remarks Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on what kind of legal procedures Guantanamo detainees should be afforded, Durbin drew a sharp distinction between military personnel, whom he described as "steadfast, professional, often heroic, working in a very difficult place--bleak and barren and hotter than the hinges of hell,"--and their leaders in the Bush administration who had given them a confusing "policy on torture that was impossible to follow."

Durbin later acknowledged that the outcry following his comments last year made him extra careful to distinguish between the work of soldiers and their civilian superiors.

"That was a painful moment in my public life," the senator said. "It was a poor choice of words."
But he also said he has never backed away from opposing the use of torture against detainees.

He pointed out that in the past year, Congress has passed the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners; President Bush has said he wants to close Guantanamo, and the Supreme Court has ruled that detainees are covered by a portion of the Geneva Conventions.

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