January 30, 2009 10:32 PM UTC

Gazette Debunks GOP Gitmo Freakout

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s refreshing to see the conservative Colorado Springs Gazette not catching the local GOP’s collective vapors over the possibility that some detainees from Guantanamo Bay might be relocated to Florence’s ultra-high security federal prison, Supermax.

Republican lawmakers pounced…gathering 35 signatures on a petition asserting that the nearly 250 Guantanamo detainees, many of them accused of membership in terrorist groups, would threaten “the safety and security of the communities in which they will ultimately be housed.”

The petition, which was sent to Ritter this week, also expresses “grave concern about the economic and security risks that the relocation of Guantanamo detainees to Colorado pose for our state and local communities.”

What the petitioners are saying is that Supermax, the most secure prison in America and 40 miles from Colorado Springs, is not secure enough to safely house the most dangerous prisoners.

In its 14 years of operation, no one has ever broken out of Supermax, escaped while being transferred there, or killed a guard. [Pols emphasis]

But the mere presence of Guantanamo detainees makes the petitioners nervous. State Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan, said Thursday that the arrival of Guantanamo detainees would be “an emotional catastrophe,” making Coloradans worry that they could be a terrorist target…

Looper is, uh, loopy here. The Unabomber is housed in Florence – does anyone in Colorado feel threatened in that they might receive a bomb in the mail because he’s housed in the same state?

Speaking of “emotional catastrophe,” without a shred of irony:

State Sen. Ken Kester, a Las Animas Republican whose district includes the prison, was quoted in a Republican news release as saying: “I don’t really think it would be appropriate to mix these terrorists with the current prison population. They’re going to be in our prisons recruiting inmates to kill American servicemen and civilians.”

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Colorado Springs Republican whose district includes Supermax, also weighed in. “I am extremely concerned about security risks to the men and women who would guard suspected or convicted terrorists,” he said in a letter sent Wednesday to Obama. “The risk to the communities that house these facilities would also be unacceptable…I must insist,” Lamborn told the president, “that you not transfer these suspected terrorists into facilities in the State of Colorado.”

But convicted terrorists are already here…

And as the Gazette goes on to explain, inmates at Supermax are kept in solitary confinement with no opportunity to associate with any fellow inmates. And Guantanamo detainees are no worse than the people who are already there.

It’s been noted that some Democrats, notably Rep. John Salazar, have also come out against transferring these inmates to Supermax. But Salazar has never made any of these absurd sensational (not to mention bogus) claims to justify his position. Rep. Salazar thinks the detainees should go to military facilities like Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas–which would do very little to satisfy Lamborn and Kester, who don’t want them anywhere they might be unquestionably subject to U.S. law.

This is, in our view, a very important distinction to make: between objections that are reasonable and those better described as contemptible.