Guantanamo Bay Divides '08 Candidates

June 19, 2007 — -- Promising to close the prison holding terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a big applause line for Democratic presidential candidates. Just how to do it is a thorny thicket they haven't thoroughly explored.

For Republicans, who view fighting terrorism as a top issue in their presidential nomination fight, the divide is over whether to close the prison and how to extract information from detainees. Among the 10 announced Republican candidates, only Arizona Sen. John McCain and Texas Rep. Ron Paul favor closing the prison.

Guantanamo, a symbol of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism, is a critical part of what both political parties see as a defining issue facing the next president: how to repair international relations while continuing to battle terrorist plots.

Polls show that voters are evenly split on whether the government should be allowed to keep terrorism suspects at Guantanamo indefinitely without charging them, 44%-43%. Republicans support the policy (63%), and most Democrats (57%) are opposed.

"This is a highly partisan issue, like so much of things that relate to the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

Foreigners picked up by U.S. military in searches for al-Qaeda terrorism suspects began arriving at Guantanamo in February 2002. Today, there are more than 380 foreigners being held there on suspicion of terrorism and awaiting trials.

Legislation in the Senate to close Guantanamo has won support from three of the eight Democratic candidates: New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden. Clinton and Dodd are co-sponsors of a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

"In the eyes of the world, Guantanamo is ammunition for our enemies, and it is time to close Guantanamo and to deal with both the security and the legal challenges," Clinton said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in April.

Biden supports competing legislation from Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, which would require release of detainees who are not charged. Harkin's bill also would close Guantanamo more quickly, Biden spokeswoman Marion Steinfels says.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has not backed either bill though he repeatedly calls for closing Guantanamo and restoring the right of prisoners to challenge their detention. "Ultimately, he supports Guantanamo closing and is still working to find the best possible solution for the prisoners who are there right now," said spokesman Bill Burton, Obama's campaign spokesman.

None of the Democrats have specific plans on how to shut down the prison. McCain and Biden advocate moving the Guantanamo prisoners to the military's only maximum-security prison, Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. That might run into a space crunch: The military prison there can hold 500 prisoners and currently has 450 inmates, according to Janet Wray, Fort Leavenworth spokeswoman.

McCain wants to close Guantanamo, he says, because its existence is damaging U.S. credibility abroad. He also wants to speed up trials. "He would want to speed up the tribunal process for prisoners, because he doesn't support indefinite detentions," McCain spokesman Danny Diaz says.

Last week, former secretary of State Colin Powell said in an ABC interview that he believes the prison should be closed and detainees moved into the federal legal system.

"I'm not inclined to agree right now that we should necessarily close Guantanamo," former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said in New Hampshire, a few days after Powell's interview. "I'd have to go look and see what are the conditions today."

Amnesty International and other human rights groups have criticized the U.S. military's early treatment of prisoners, who were shackled and kept in open-air cages. Adil al-Zamil, a former Kuwaiti government clerk, told the Associated Press he was without food for two days and menaced by dogs. The Supreme Court ruled last June that the detainees are covered by the Geneva Conventions, which forbid degrading treatment.

McCain, who endured torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, clashed with President Bush last year as Congress debated a plan for military tribunals and interrogations to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. McCain insisted that interrogation rules need to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who says he hasn't taken a position on closing the prison, have both said conditions at Guantanamo are acceptable.

"The food down there is unbelievable. This is not this gulag; this is a modern prison which treats people with dignity and respect," Romney said this month.

Romney said in a June 5 Republican debate that "we ought to double Guantanamo" but didn't mean it literally, spokesman Kevin Madden says. His remark was "recognition that the governor wants to go out and catch more terrorists and doesn't want to import them once they're captured," Madden says. "The legal rationale for keeping them there is that they ought not to be afforded all the legal rights of a U.S. citizen."

One divide among Republican candidates concerns how to get information from suspects. McCain has rejected "waterboarding," a practice in which prisoners are held under water, which he says is tantamount to torture. Giuliani and Romney have not ruled out waterboarding specifically; they support "enhanced" techniques.

"I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of," Giuliani said at the June 5 New Hampshire debate. "It shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of."

How quickly military commission trials, authorized by Congress last year, will occur was thrown into doubt by a court ruling this month. A military judge at Guantanamo said that two detainees headed for trial had not been classified as "unlawful enemy combatants," as required by the law authorizing military commission trials.

Contributing: Tali Yahalom, Associated Press