Democrats still struggling to close Guantanamo prison
 A week after multiple House committees took up the subject of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center where suspected terrorists are being held, House Democrats are still searching for the best way to go about closing the controversial facility.
A Democratic aide on the House Appropriations Committee told RAW STORY that Defense Secretary Robert Gates needed to follow through with the Bush administration's stated desire to shutter the base by proposing a real solution.
"Secretary Gates's willingness to work with Congress opens an avenue to solve this issue," the aide said. "We're going to be looking to the Department of Defense to come up with a proposal on where to place these detainees; they're the ones who are best able to come up with a secure solution."
But a human rights expert who closely monitors events at Guantanamo worried that building the case to close the detention facility was far from over.
"I don't think right now that there is an overwhelming majority of people prepared to vote to close Guantanamo, but that's primarily because they haven't thought through what you would do as an alternative," said Elisa Massimino, Washington office director of Human Rights First, in an interview. Massimino offered her testimony at a Thursday, March 29 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
Last Thursday, Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee John Murtha (D-PA) quizzed Secretary Gates on Guantanamo in a hearing on the defense budget.
"I want it closed. I wish it would be closed," Murtha said. "But it's not that easy."
In the hearing, Gates acknowledged Guantanamo was eroding America's credibility.
"Because of things that happened earlier at Guantanamo, there is a taint about it," Gates said. "And it's one of the reasons why I had recommended or pressed the issue of trying to get the trials moved to the United States, because I felt that no matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place at Guantanamo, in the international community they would lack credibility."
But the Secretary also advanced a series of familiar objections to closing the base outright.
"The reality is there are people at Guantanamo we would like to turn back to their home countries, and their home countries won't take them. There are also some number of people at Guantanamo that, frankly, based on their own confessions, should never be released," Gates argued.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), the Defense Appropriations member who Murtha has tasked with looking into closing Guantanamo, put the onus on the Defense Department to figure out what to do next.
"It's something that falls in your lap, because it's the Defense Department policy to detain them indefinitely," Moran argued. "I think the committee would appreciate you giving some thought to pragmatically, logistically how we could achieve the closure of Guantanamo, whether it be at Quantico, Fort Leavenworth, Charleston -- you would know best. But I think it's time that you might give us some suggestions."
Some Republicans say closing Guantanamo may endanger US security.
"It's right to keep Guantanamo open," said ranking Armed Services Republican Duncan Hunter (R-CA). "The idea that we're going to take these hardened terrorists who are very effective in killing people and move them to communities throughout the United States I think is very ill-founded."
Hunter is also running for president.
The architects of the Bush administration's detainee policy could fight the base's closure on the grounds that it implies having the prison in the first place was wrong.
"If Guantanamo were closed and people were brought to the US, the likelihood of details of how they were treated emerging would increase," Human Rights First's Massimino said.
Congressional Democrats are considering alternatives. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, noted that some have suggested using federal prisons like the so-called "supermax" ADX facility in Colorado. Others have proposed using brigs on existing military bases.
A former top legal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell, William Taft IV, thought this last solution had some merit.
"We took in the Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s, we had over 100,000 people housed over a period of eight months on military bases," he said in the Armed Services hearing. "There is plenty of room. There are facilities. We can get security. The military can do this."
But ultimately, Massimino thought that the real objective needed to be ending the separate system of justice for those accused of terrorism, of which Guantanamo continues to be emblematic.
"I really think Congress ought to think more about what are the real barriers to trying some of these people in the regular federal legal system," she said to RAW STORY. "We have a lot more terrorism convictions in that system, so I think that while Congress and everyone has been fixated on tinkering with the military system, some of us keep saying don't forget we have a regular system that's quite capable of trying many of these cases."
As the debate over Guantanamo goes on, the group Amnesty International issued a report yesterday charging that conditions of detention at Guantanamo Bay have actually worsened in recent months.
"A new facility which opened in December 2006, known as Camp 6, has created even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation," the group alleged in a press release yesterday. "It appears that around 80 per cent of the approximately 385 men currently held at Guantánamo are in isolation – a reversal of earlier moves to ease conditions and allow more socialising among detainees."
The report also notes that the number of detainees held in more communal conditions has declined.
"Many of those transferred to Camp 6 were previously held in Camp 4 where they lived communally in barracks and had access to a range of recreational activities. Camp 4 is now reported to house only around 35 detainees, down from 180 in May 2006," the press release explains.
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