Crow Tribal Council Chairperson Carl Venne and Barack Obama at the Obama Rally on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana on May 19, 2008. Obama is the first presidential candidate in American history to visit the Crow Nation. (wikipedia)
Posted on 05/31/2009 7:37:47 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
A Wild West cattle town is desperate to boost its ailing economy by offering its jail as a new home for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay.
Senators and congressman from across America have insisted that their states will not accept terrorist suspects in the homeland, but the folk of Hardin, Montana (population: 3,384) are made of sterner stuff. Greg Smith, Hardin's economic development director, volunteered its state-of-the-art prison to the federal government.
"This is a dying town," he said. "Businesses here are struggling like there's no tomorrow. But here is a solution that would help us, help the United States and help the world. It's a long shot but we have to try."
The town stands on the edge of the Crow Indian Reservation a few dusty miles from the Little Bighorn Battlefield, where Lt Col George Custer made his last stand in 1876.
It has lost most of its shops. Even its dollar store is about to close.
The prison has stood empty since it was built two years ago and is in danger of becoming a white elephant because of a bitter dispute with the Montana government, which claims it is not needed. It was designed to bring up to 150 jobs to Hardin, cost $27 million (£16.7 million) and can hold 464 inmates.
The town council voted unanimously to offer to house the inmates that Donald Rumsfeld, then Pentagon chief, famously called the "worst of the worst", and sent a letter to the White House setting out its case.
Mr Smith said it was important not to fear terrorists. "We can't cower to the terrorists. If the whole world's afraid of them, haven't they won? To me, it would be a bigger concern if it were axe murderers or rapists. The guys at Guantanamo are mainly
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
But are they granted certain rights just by virtue of being held on US soil?
They will be after the ACLU gets free and easy access to them.
The ACLU and CAIR wouldn't have to go through Cuban waters to get to them.
Then again Castro is their comrade.
yitbos
Yes. Which is exactly why Gitmo was employed.
Once they are on U.S. soil, they would have access to American civil courts, ACLU lawyers (and judges), who would exploit issues like Miranda Rights, 4th Amendment freedoms from unreasonable search & seizure, a right to Habeas corpus, the Equal Protection clause, etc.
Obviously, none of these things exist on the battlefield.
In hindsight, we should've waterboarded the lot of them. Then executed every one of the rodents.
I live here too and so do all 5 of my children. The town is dying for one reason. The Crow Indians stumble around drunk in front of every business in town begging a quarter from whomever passes by. The “Town Fathers” who own 90% of the buildings, businesses and the Little Horn Bank will say “oh they are harmless”. Tell that to the tourists and new business investors who arrive here and say “ To Hell with this place”. We locals all shop in Billings because we don’t want to do the “Drunken Begger Dodge” just to get some groceries or plumbing suppiles.
Screw the prison and everything it stands for. Uphold the rule of law and enforce public drunkeness prohibitions and clean the F-ing town up. The prison will only create a bunch of government jobs and the families of the “drunks” who are minorities will be the 1st ones hired. This will make the existing problems worse and Hardin will be the “Indian Detroit” of the western prairie.
It's not like you don't have a place to hold 'em, eh?
Since they are citizens of a foreign nation, they can be held as non-combatants. Prove to Uncle Sam you are good to your word.
yitbos
My point has nothing to do with the Gitmos. It has to do with the articles point on the fact that Hardin is dying. It’s dying because of self destruction and prison money will only make a few rich and turn this small problem into a giant government sponsered problem. Like Detroit.
I'm curious as to what motivated the town to build a state of the art hoosegow. More importantly, where did the money come from? I would think a more logical use of the prison would be to rent it out to states who have inadequate prison space.
I once lived in a county that was constantly being harangued by the prison lobby because the county hoosegow was too old, but the voters wouldn't pass a required bond issue, so they took their minstrel show to the neighboring county in another state, who ended up with so much extra space that they rented it out to our county on those rare occasions when our jail was really full.
Thank you for your perspective on this matter.
I hope you will continue to speak out as you shed much needed light on this matter.
Maybe your fellow citizens should think about what happened at Beslan before being so eager to offer up their town as Gitmo v.2. Just saying.
(From my letter to Colorado’s governor, Democrat Bill Ritter regarding the use of the SuperMax facility in Florence, CO to house Gitmo detainees.)
‘Attacks on prisons by al Qaeda to release their fellow jihadists are too numerous to list here. What do you think they were doing at that school in Beslan? Beslan had been used by Ossetian militia (Christian) as an internment camp for Ingush civilians (Sunni Muslims) during the 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict, and it was chosen as a target because of this connection.’
Well it was the prison lobby and a few local fat cats that decided a prison was just the answer to the “dying town” problem. The town itself has great people and plenty of money and ideas to make it successful but it lacks the courage to deal with the public drunkenness and flat out “bum invasion”. They passed a law prohibiting the sale of alchohol in the neighboring town of Crow which is an Indian reservation. So what do they do but take their government money and move over to Hardin where there are 10 bars and a couple of liquor stores.
The prison needs to be scrapped and the true problems dealt with. I have tons of property that in the short term will make me plenty of money selling it for new housing and such and can walk away and say “who cares”. That’s not the American way. I want to leave this place a better place for the next generation.
Greed and pass the buck attitudes is the answer to your question.
I’m in favor of this for one reason:
Cattle Prods.
;)
While, on one hand, I think alcohol is an individual right which should be respected, I also appreciate the damage it has done to Indians, who do not have the heredity to handle it, for the most part. Those who swear it off (or ban it) completely are better off than those who try to deal with it in moderation. My great granddad was a Sioux, an otherwise very decent man who ended up dead before his time due to a battle with the bottle. The womenfolk in his family were very active in getting prohibition passed even before women got the vote nationwide, because, as you probably know, western states like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah gave women the right to vote long before the rest of the country.
We are 1/8th Cherokee and 1/8th Chipewa. Some of us look 1/2 Native and others look Nordic to Swede. My brother is married to a Lakota Sioux and they are both very succesfull mid level executives living in WA. They travel to S.Dakota every year and visit the reservation she grew up on and escaped when she was 17.
The alchohol problem since Hardin is so close to Crow has simply transferred over to us. The local businesses can only sit around and whine about the lack of business all the while ignoring the elephant in the room.
We as a family drive 70 miles to Billings to eat out shop etc... We live way outside of town and no longer bring commerce to business people who refuse to step outside and run off the panhandling drunks. I had an office in town for 3 years and it’s what I did 5 times a week. 99% of the business owners refuse to address the problem and instead believe that a prison is going to save their town.
The stupidity is monumental.
They’re all mad at him now because the check is still not in the mail. Hope and Change? Has anyone ever lived near a reservation? This is what the entire country will look like if we let socialism bring us our “Hope and Change”.
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