U.S. should be proud of Cuba lockup, Cotton says
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., took to the airwaves Tuesday night in defense of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba and urge that it remain open.
Cotton appeared Tuesday on On the Record with Greta Van Susteren and said, “We shouldn’t be embarrassed by that facility. We should be using it to keep America safe.”
On a different Fox News show Monday evening, Cotton, who is from Dardanelle, said everyone locked up there deserves to be there and is treated appropriately.
“We should be proud of the way we’ve treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay and the way our soldiers conduct themselves all around the world, to include the people who are doing the very hard work at Guantanamo Bay,” Cotton said.
Attorneys for some of the men detained there said the recently elected senator and former Army captain, should know better than to make comments that could affect how Americans captured overseas are treated.
One accused Cotton of displaying “spectacular ignorance.”
The Guantanamo Bay lockup opened slightly more than 13 years ago and has been a politically charged issue since. Of the more than 775 detainees who over the years have been held at the facility, 122 remain there. Some have never been charged with a crime nor given a trial, and nearly half have been cleared for release but remain in prison.
Over the years, President Barack Obama has repeatedly called for the lockup to be closed. He did so again during his State of the Union speech last month.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is considering legislation that would prohibit transfers of inmates from the lockup for the next two years. During a committee hearing Thursday, Cotton questioned the Obama administration’s assertion that terrorist groups use the detention facility as a recruiting tool.
“We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe. As far as I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in hell. But as long as they can’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay,” Cotton said previously.
The comment drew broad media attention and prompted criticism from David Nevin, attorney for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that Americans could be similarly dismissed if they were captured in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“I thought it was utterly shameful, a United States senator should not be speaking in that way,” Nevin said in a video that appeared on Fox News’ The Kelly File on Monday.
Also appearing on Monday’s show, Cotton said those imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay shouldn’t be freed.
“They are not American citizens, they are terrorists. They are not entitled to the legal rights of American citizens. If they didn’t want to be detained indefinitely, they shouldn’t have taken up arms against America. They shouldn’t have helped mastermind the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans, and if we release them then you can be sure a large number of them will return to the battlefield,” he said.
Cotton pointed to testimony from Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense, that 29.7 percent of released detainees are either confirmed to be or suspected to have resumed fighting.
The men, who remain at the lockup are not “innocent goat herders,” but “hardened terrorists” who will resume attacking the United States, Cotton said Monday.
By phone Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney for the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, disputed that those at the lockup are hardened terrorists.
“To say that there are no goat herders there, that everyone there is a savage … betrays spectacular ignorance of the facts,” Kadidal said. “I realize he’s the youngest guy in the Senate … but there is still a baseline minimum amount of responsibility that someone in his position should take before making statements like that.”
Based in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights has advocated for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay lockup and the release of the detainees for more than a decade. It has helped several of the detained men sue for their freedom.
Of the 122 remaining detainees, 54 have been cleared for release but remain imprisoned. Another 58 are undergoing the review process to be cleared for release. Ten are either being prosecuted or have been sentenced.
A person is cleared for release when the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, have unanimously agreed.
Kadidal said the U.S. takes a “zero risk” approach to transferring detainees out of Guantanamo Bay.
Cotton’s spokesman Caroline Rabbitt responded by pointing to Islamic State commander Mullah Abdul Rauf who was reportedly killed Monday by a drone strike. He was released from Guantanamo Bay in 2007.
“[He] was cleared by the same review process as the terrorists you referred to and returned to Afghanistan where he joined ISIS and was a driving force behind the spread of radical Islam,” she said.
“We shouldn’t be embarrassed by that facility. We should be using it to keep America safe.” — Tom Cotton, speaking Tuesday on On the Record with Greta Van Susteren