[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14278-14280]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GUANTANAMO

  Mr. KYL. Now, Madam President, since I think I have a little bit more 
time on the Republican side--though if I have colleagues who wish to 
speak, I will be happy to finish for the moment--I will go for a little 
bit longer on another subject.
  We have had kind of a running debate on the question of closing 
Guantanamo prison. This is a subject the Senate has spoken on by an 
overwhelming vote. I think 90-some Senators voted not to close Gitmo. 
The American people are 3 to 1 opposed to bringing Gitmo prisoners into 
their State. They are 2 to 1, at least, in opposition to closing 
Guantanamo prison. This is not something on which there is a little bit 
of doubt. The American people are very much opposed to closing 
Guantanamo prison and bringing those people to their own States.
  Nevertheless, the assistant majority leader and five other Democrats 
voted for the appropriation of money--or the authorization of money--
actually, the appropriation of money to close Gitmo

[[Page 14279]]

and acknowledge that would require bringing many of those people to the 
United States.
  Well, I happen to agree with Senator McConnell that this is a bad 
idea, and with the other 89 Senators who agreed it is a bad idea, at 
least until we have some kind of a plan to do it. So I was a little 
struck this morning when the Senator from Illinois said: Well, here is 
the proof of why we should close the Guantanamo prison.
  We just have had an announcement we are going to try a terrorist, 
whose name is Ghailani, in the United States, and that proves we can 
close Gitmo.
  Well, it does not prove that. It does not prove anything. What it 
proves is, we can try somebody in U.S. courts. We have done that with a 
few terrorists, and it is not a pleasant experience. The one that most 
of us recall in the Washington, DC, area was the trial across the river 
in Alexandria, VA, of Zacarias Moussaoui. That was extraordinarily 
difficult for the government to do. It was very difficult for at least 
two main reasons.
  First of all, much of the evidence that was gained to try him was 
classified and could not be shared with him, and there were significant 
questions of due process as a result. How can we try somebody for a 
serious crime and not show them the evidence against them? That is one 
of the main reasons it is very difficult to try these terrorists for 
crimes.
  The second problem is the security issue. The people in Virginia, in 
Alexandria--in the county there--will tell you, it was a costly and 
difficult thing for them to be able to conduct this trial of Zacarias 
Moussaoui there. Nevertheless, it was possible. Although costly, it was 
possible. It was even possible to get a conviction, I would suggest, 
primarily because of some decisions Moussaoui made. Nonetheless, it was 
possible to do so.
  Everybody acknowledges there are some people who need to be tried for 
serious crimes, in effect, such as war crimes, and who should be tried 
in U.S. courts. It does not make it easy, but it can be done. What it 
does not prove is that it should be done for all of the people at 
Gitmo. In fact, not even the President suggests that. The President, in 
his speech a few weeks ago, acknowledged that many of the prisoners at 
Gitmo now are never going to have a trial. They are simply being held 
until the termination of the hostilities that have caused them to be 
captured and imprisoned in the first place. They are like prisoners of 
war who can be detained until the war is over.
  Here, however, they do not even have the rights of prisoners of war 
under the Geneva accords because they do not adhere to the rules of 
war, they do not fight with uniforms for a nation state, and so on. 
They, in fact, are terrorists. So they are still allowed humane 
treatment, but they do not have the same rights as prisoners of war.
  What that means is--as the President acknowledged, as the U.S. 
Supreme Court has acknowledged--we have a right to hold them until the 
cessation of hostilities so they do not kill any more people. We cannot 
just turn them loose.
  The President, in his speech, made the point that at least 60--I 
think is the number that was used--of these prisoners have been 
released and that they were released by the Bush administration. That 
is true. The Bush administration was under a lot of pressure to try to 
release as many of these people who were being held as possible, and so 
they held determinations. They have a determination once a year and 
initially as to what the status of the individual is and whether he is 
still a danger. Eventually, in many of the cases, they decided the 
person could be released back to their home country or to a country 
that would take them and it would not pose a danger to the United 
States.
  The problem is, there is a very high rate of recidivism among these 
terrorists. One in seven are believed to have returned to the 
battlefield. We have evidence of many of them, specifically by name, 
who returned and who caused a lot of death. There are two in particular 
I recall who both eventually engaged in suicide bombing attacks, 
killing, I think, 20-some people in one instance and at least a half 
dozen people in another instance.
  So even when we try our best to make a determination that is fair to 
the individuals, but we do not want to hold people beyond the time they 
should be held--that they no longer pose a danger--we make mistakes and 
we release people back to the battlefield who are going to try to kill 
us, and they are certainly going to try to kill others, including our 
allies; and, in fact, they do so. That is a risk, but it is not a risk 
that we should lightly take.
  The remaining 240-some prisoners at Guantanamo are the worst of the 
worst. These are people about whom it is very difficult to say: Well, 
they do not pose a danger anymore. We have already been through those, 
and, as I said, one in seven of those people have not only posed a 
danger, they have actually gone off and killed people.
  So we have 240 of the worst of the worst, and the President correctly 
went through the different things that can happen to them. Some of 
them--a limited number--will be tried in U.S. courts, such as this 
terrorist Ghailani whom Senator Durbin spoke of earlier this morning. 
It is hard to do. There are a lot of issues with it. But we will try to 
try some of them.
  Others can be tried with military commissions. Others will not be 
able to be tried. They will have to be held. There may be a few whom we 
deem no longer a threat to us and they will have to be released but to 
whom nobody knows because nobody appears to want--well, the French will 
take one of them, and I think there may be another European country 
that said--maybe the Germans will take one. That still leaves a lot to 
go.
  So the bottom line is, many are going to have to be detained. The 
question is, Where do we detain them? My colleague from Illinois says: 
Well, there are other people who agree we should close Gitmo. Even my 
colleague from Arizona has certainly said that. But what he did not say 
is, before we have a plan to do so--and he himself has acknowledged 
this is really hard to do. And while he would like to close it--as he 
himself has said: I do not know how you do it--we certainly cannot do 
it without a plan, and we certainly cannot do it based upon the 
timetable that the President is talking about.
  So it is one thing to say it would be nice to close it. It is quite 
another to figure out how to do it that would be safe for the American 
people.
  Finally, just a point I want to mention--well, two final points. The 
Senator from Illinois said this is a problem he, meaning the President, 
inherited. No. The President did not inherit the problem of having to 
come up with a plan to close Gitmo by next January 20. The President 
made that problem himself. When he was sworn into office, I think it 
was within 3 days, he said: And we are going to close Gitmo within 12 
months.
  That is an arbitrary deadline that I submit he should not have 
imposed on himself or on the country because it is going to cause bad 
decisions to be made. We may have to try more people, such as this 
terrorist Ghailani, in the United States than we want to or than we 
should. In any event, we are going to have to try to find, I gather, 
facilities in which these people could be held in the United States.
  FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the House of 
Representatives that that posed a lot of problems, real risks, for the 
United States. Nobody is saying it cannot be done. The question is, 
Should it be done? Most of us believe, no, it should not be done; there 
are better alternatives.
  The final point I want to make is this: What is wrong with the 
alternative of the prison at Guantanamo? It is a $200 million state-of-
the-art facility in which, as I pointed out yesterday, people are very 
well treated, humanely treated. They have gotten a whole lot better 
medical and dental care than they ever got or could have hoped to have 
gotten in their home countries, fighting us on the battlefield of 
Afghanistan or somewhere else.
  The bottom line is, this is a top-rate facility. The people there do 
not mistreat prisoners. That is the myth.

[[Page 14280]]

Somehow people conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib with Guantanamo. 
This brings up the last point. It is argued by my colleague from 
Illinois and others that, well, terrorists recruit based upon the 
existence of Guantanamo prison.
  Think about that for a moment. Are we going to say because terrorists 
accuse us of doing something wrong--even though we did not--we are 
going to stop any activity in that area because we want to take away 
that as a recruitment tool? We would have to basically go out of 
business as the United States of America if we are going to take away 
all that terrorists use to recruit people to fight the West. They do 
not like the way we treat women with equality in the United States. 
They do not like a lot of our social values and mores. They do not even 
like the fact that we hold elections.
  So because that is used as a recruitment tool, we are going to stop 
doing all of that? What sense does this make? We treat people humanely 
and properly at Guantanamo. People were mistreated in another prison 
called Abu Ghraib. They are not the same. Abu Ghraib, therefore, does 
not represent the example of what we should be doing with respect to 
Guantanamo.
  We will have more debate on this subject. I note the time is very 
short, and I meant to leave a little time for my colleague from Texas. 
I hope to engage my colleagues in further conversation about this 
issue. The American people do not want people from Gitmo put into their 
home States.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Presiding Officer.

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