Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) flip-flops on Gitmo, lock-steps behind Cheney

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

The debate continues over whether allegations of abuse at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, now make it a serious liability. Some Republicans have begun to think so, and late last week the Bush White House itself signaled a degree of reconsideration, however slight, with the president saying that his administration was "exploring all alternatives" for detaining prisoners in the war against terrorism.

But Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared to go along with that view briefly over the weekend, has since put to rest -- in his own mind, anyway -- any concern that Gitmo is a problem. "Now, does this hurt us from the standpoint of international opinion?" Cheney asked during a speech Monday at the National Press Club regarding allegations of abuse at the prison. "I frankly don't think so. And my own personal view of it is that those who are most urgently advocating that we shut down Guantanamo probably don't agree with our policies anyway."

Cheney said that detainees there had been treated "far better" by the United States than they could expect to be treated "by virtually any other government on the face of the earth."

Such moral relativism from the vice president is nothing new, but that doesn't make it any less appalling. (Is it even necessary to revisit Abu Ghraib here, or the growing pile of evidence that the Bush administration has sanctioned torture?) Cheney's got good company in Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and dedicated ally of the Pentagon, who, like the vice president, appeared to flirt with reason over the weekend, acknowledging on "Fox News Sunday" that shutting down Gitmo could allow the U.S. to "get it off the table and move on." But in a news conference yesterday on Capitol Hill, Hunter did an about-face and marched in lockstep behind Cheney. He focused on one prisoner held at the facility, Mohamed al-Kahtani, the man believed to have been the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot. Hunter pointed to al-Kahtani's apparently cushy lifestyle inside the prison: "The guy who wanted to drive that plane into the building at the World Trade Center is going to dine tomorrow on lemon fish with two types of vegetables, two types of fruit, and then he will be afforded his taxpayer-funded Koran, taxpayer-funded prayer beads and oil so he can pray, presumably to kill more Americans," Hunter said. He added that it was a "myth" that detainees were tortured at Guantanamo.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html



Congressman Duncan Hunter
"Proudly Serving the 52nd District of California"

http://www.house.gov/hunter/