‘Trading One Black Eye for a New Black Eye’ (Podcast)

[struggle4progress]

Podcast Interview with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Ca.: Closing Gitmo While Continuing Indefinite Detention is ‘Trading One Black Eye for a New Black Eye’

January 22, 2010 1:42 PM

On the one year anniversary of President Obama’s executive order to have shuttered the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay by, well, today, we spoke to Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., former ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence and current chair of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.

Harman was fired up about the decision by the Obama administration’s Guantanamo Task Force’s to recommend 50 current detainees be detained in the U.S. indefinitely.

"Rather than throw out 230 years of history, we could offer the federal courts -- provided that they are vigorously pursuing this, the FBI is vigorously pursuing this --a chance to develop new evidence against these folks and try them under our current system of laws,” she said. “And I think that this would be a much better, more appropriate way to go and you know the problem here is that we are training one black eye, that would be the stain of Guantanamo, for a new black eye, and that would be the stain of preventive detention in the United States of America" ...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/01/podcast-interview-with-rep-jane-harman-dca-closing-gitmo-while-continuing-indefinite-detention-is-tr.html