Colin Powell says Guantanamo should be closed
Reuters
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for foreign terrorism suspects should be immediately closed and its inmates moved to the United States.
Powell, who in a 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council made the case for war against Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction that were never found, said the controversial prison in Cuba had become a "major problem" for the United States' image abroad and done more harm than good.
"Guantanamo has become a major, major problem ... in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon ... and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press.
"Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it,"
(A bit more, here.)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for foreign terrorism suspects should be immediately closed and its inmates moved to the United States.
Powell, who in a 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council made the case for war against Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction that were never found, said the controversial prison in Cuba had become a "major problem" for the United States' image abroad and done more harm than good.
"Guantanamo has become a major, major problem ... in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon ... and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press.
"Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it,"
(A bit more, here.)
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1 Comments:
Gitmo was just one segment, but the Reuters’ story misses Powell’s real comments.
Read the Meet The Press transcript .
Key points : #1 Rice is not doing her part to push the political process.
That’s only one part of the overall surge. The other two parts of the surge, building up Iraqi forces, military and police forces, so that they can take over responsibility for security and getting the Iraqi political leadership to understate—undertake reconciliation efforts and to do something to turn out the fire. And so General Petraeus is moving ahead with his part of it, but he’s the one who’s been saying all along there is no military solution to this problem. The solution has to emerge from the other two legs, the Iraqi political actions and reconciliation, and building up the Iraqi security and police forces. And those two legs are not, are not going well. That, that part of strategy is not going well. And that, I think, is the real challenge that we’re facing. These three elements are not in synchronization. And it’s one thing to send over 30,000 additional troops, but if the other two legs—Iraqi political reconciliation and the buildup of the Iraqi forces—are not synchronized with that, then it’s questionable as to how well it’s going to be able to do.
#2. Powell calls it a civil war and the military leaders did not want the surge.
The president received advice from his military advisers last fall that said do not send more troops. General Abizaid went before the Congress, the, the commander of Central Command, and said he had consulted with all his division commanders in Iraq and all of the senior commanders, and none of them wanted to send additional troops. They thought the strategy at that point should be to put the burden on the Iraqis to resolve what I call a civil war.
#3. Despite Rice’s claims that we could not foresee all the problems, Powell claims they did know and did not plan accordingly. Further, the duration was well known.
the 5th of August 2002, the president and I, with Dr. Rice present, had a conversation that touched on many of the likely outcomes and the realization that it would probably tie up a significant percentage of our armed forces for a long period of time, it would cost a great deal, we’re getting inside of a sectarian conflict that we would have to keep a lid on, and we would have to get Iraqis up and moving as quickly as possible in order to hand the responsibility off to them. And so I don’t think any of us were unaware of the kinds of problems that we might face. I certainly was not unaware, and I was informed by my own thinking, as well as CIA documentation, not just the one Mr. Pincus makes reference to. But all along the way, those who had experience in this part of the world and those that had experience in war understood that we were taking on something that was going to be a major burden to us for many years, and I think the president was well aware of that. And my, my judgment is that we didn’t prepare ourselves well enough for the kinds of challenges that occurred in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.
A powerful interview, with Powell backing the President at times, but also letting the blame fall where it belongs.
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