Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden were horrifically mendacious tonight in their comments on the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility. Their answers were shameful.
Warren said that the facility is “an international embarrassment.” Biden said it is actually “an advertisement” encouraging terrorism.
How dare they?
I’ve been to the facility. It is a model prison. Our military personnel keep it spotless. They take great pride in the job they do there. The inmates are treated far better than inmates in most American criminal prisons. International observers have praised it as one of the most humane prisons they’ve ever seen. The rules go to almost absurd lengths to accommodate the inmates’ religious observances, to provide them opportunities for intellectual activity, and to keep them well-nourished and with good medical care. They also have benefited from all sorts of pro bono legal assistance.
Even the “interrogation” room looks plush and well-appointed, like a TV sitcom’s psychiatrists office. One guard joked, quite believably, that “the only torture that goes on here is when we serve them their Starbucks cold.”
The “enemy combatants” held in Guantanamo are there for a reason. They have been duly adjudged the worst of the worst, practicing terrorism in direct contravention of the rules of war. All too often, when the United States has released inmates from Guantanamo, something the Obama-Biden administration did far too much of, they have returned to terrorism and helped kill more innocents.
The American media did a horrible job 15 years ago conflating Guantanamo’s prison with the abuses carried out by rogue soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. They also failed to report when the original, very temporary facility at Guantanamo (which was substandard, but in no way torturous) was replaced rather quickly by the state-of-the-art prison that has been there ever since.
Americans have paid a high price to keep the world safe from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. In the process, we captured hundreds of evil people who fit in no prior known category either of prisoners of war or domestic criminals. About 40 of those hundreds remain. Our efforts to keep them from doing more harm, while treating them more humanely than they might even deserve, merit praise, not cheap shots, from politicians pandering to ignorant audiences.
