-By Warner Todd Huston
Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) is raising a red flag over the defense bill because the Democrat led House of Representatives and Democrat led Senate has slipped in a provision that would allow accused terrorists to be housed in prisons in the interior of the United States.
In an apparent effort to get around the President’s decision to ignore his own deadline to shut down the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba terrorist detention facility, the Democrat leadership included the provision in order to give terrorists and detainees in Guantanamo a place to go so that the Cuba-based facility can eventually — and sooner rather than later — be shut down.
Senator Kirk blew the whistle on this horrible idea and vowed to put a hold on the defense bill until that part gets stripped. Kirk appeared on Chicago’s WLS radio and told hosts Don and Roma why he wanted to put the bill on hold.
“In late breaking news last night, the Democratic leadership may be trying to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists to the United States. They’ve inserted language in the defense bill that would then give the president the ability to transfer Guantanamo terrorists to the continental United States. That has a direct impact on Illinois where they could come to the Thomson facility. Also remember, the moment they come to the United States, a whole wrath of new legal procedures and abilities attached to them and after we saw the near disaster of the first civilian trial of a terrorist in New York, I think this is another last gasp of majority leader Reid which needs to be defeated,” Kirk said.
Kirk said that this move would weaken national security and reminded listeners that senior Taliban leader Mullah Zakir has already been released by the U.S. He said Zakir’s release shows us that more actual terrorists could easily be released and if they are in prisons inside the U.S. that means they could be released right inside our heartland.
Kirk is so right on this, too. Imagine how our fetid court system will do with multiple trials for terrorists being held inside the U.S.A.? Who does not doubt that cases will “conveniently” fall apart due to incompetence and activist, left-wing judges? If we see these terrorists transferred to facilities inside the U.S. it won’t be long before at least some of these dangerous enemies will be wandering free in our communities and left to plan their next murderous actions right here at home.
Above all, moving terrorists to U.S. prisons would automatically bestow upon these foreign enemies all the rights afforded to American citizens by the Constitution of the United States. This would necessarily happen because these terrorists would be winding their way through our civil and criminal court systems and our legal system has no provision for “terrorists” ensconced in it. The only way for these terrorists to be able to appear before an American civil or criminal court is for the accused to be afforded all our rights. Our legal system isn’t set up any other way.
In any case, Senator Kirk did the country a service to alert us all to this calamitous move by the Democrats.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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