Powell Would Shut Down Guantanamo Prison Camp

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that he favors immediately closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison and moving its detainees to U.S. facilities. The prison, which now holds about 380 suspected terrorists, has tarnished the world's perception of the United States, the moderate Republican said. "If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. And I would not let any of those people go," he said. "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them."Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Congress and the Bush administration should work together to allow imprisonment of some of the more dangerous detainees elsewhere so the military camp at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba could be closed.

The Defense Department estimates it would take about three years to conduct 60 to 80 military commission trials, if the administration should decide to hold that many trials.Mr. Powell, who was secretary of State under President Bush, said the U.S. should do away with the military commission system in favor of federal law or the manual for courts-martial. "I would also do it because every morning, I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds," Mr. Powell said. "And so essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission."

My Opinon- I agree with Colin that we can not hold these prisoners forever but they can not just be allowed to just walk.They should get there time in court and if found inncocent we should have a speacial operation team that watches and monitors them until they drop dead.