Intel Dem: Fix Gitmo — don’t close it

A key House Democrat on intelligence matters believes that Guantanamo
Bay doesn’t need to be closed, but rather, needs to be fixed.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he is planning legislation that would order the facility to be kept open, while assuring the world that torture and mistreatment of detainees has ended.

{mosads}“What’s needed at Guantanamo Bay is transparency and accountability,” Hastings said. “You go back and change the bad things and turn the page.”

Hastings said a colleague dubbed his plan “Guantanamo 2.0.” Still in the draft stage, it would assure access to the prison by the United States’s Western allies and watchdog groups like Amnesty International and the Red Cross. Add that to President Obama’s decision to end “enhanced interrogation,” and there isn’t a need to close the detention facility, Hastings said.

“All they want to know is that there isn’t any torture and people can go there and see,” Hastings said.

He said that under his proposal, “a small number” of detainees might still come to the United States to be tried.

Congress and President Obama are at odds about the closure of Guantanamo. Obama has ordered the detention facility closed by January 2010 and gave a speech explaining how some detainees can be safely confined in U.S. prisons. But Congress has stricken funding amid constituent concerns about where in the United States the prisoners would be sent.