Rep. Jack Murtha: Send The Gitmo Detainees To My Congressional District
No other country on the planet wants the detainees housed in Gitmo, but Jack Murtha says he wouldn’t mind having them in his Congressional district:
Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., says he’d be willing to house prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in his congressional district if President Obama makes good on a plan to close the U.S. prison there.
As one of his first acts in office, the president circulated a draft Wednesday that would shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year.
Murtha only has a minimum security prison in his district. But he says he’d have no reservations about holding detainees there in a maximum security prison.
“Sure, I’d take ‘em,” said Murtha, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. “They’re no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo.”
Murtha added that there was “no reason not to put ‘em in prisons in the United States and handle them the way they would handle any other prisoners.”
First of all, it’s worth noting that the detainees in Gitmo are, in fact, pretty darn dangerous. Just ask their guards. And let’s not pretend like any prison where these detainees are kept wouldn’t be a target for their terrorist buddies who would just love to bust them out.
If I were in Murtha’s district I wouldn’t be very happy about this. I think that if Murtha wants a terrorist detention facility in his district he should build it next to his house.
Something tells me he’s probably not willing to go quite that far.
