Posted on 08/13/2009 8:03:43 PM PDT by GOP_Lady
STANDISH, Mich. -- Federal officials visited a maximum-security prison in rural Michigan on Thursday to assess its suitability to house Guantanamo Bay inmates.
Representatives of the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments toured the prison in Standish, 145 miles north of Detroit.
The Standish prison and a military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are being considered to house the detainees if the prison in Cuba is closed by 2010, as ordered by President Barack Obama.
The Guantanamo Bay facility houses 229 suspected al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters.
Some locals favor bringing the detainees to Standish if necessary to keep the prison from closing. The prison is the region's largest employer, with about 340 workers, and its closing would really harm the local economy, Republican state Rep. Tim Moore said. The region's unemployment rate is more than 17%.
Others fear bringing the Guantanamo detainees to Standish would make the town a target.
"The problem I have is, you almost are putting a bull's-eye on the whole entire area. There are just too many things that could go wrong," said Tom Kerrins, the chief steward for the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union representing prison workers in Standish.
Mr. Kerrins, 49 years old, said the union opposes sending the Gitmo prisoners to Standish in part because it doubts the jobs of watching over them would go to the state officers working there now and would instead go to federal officers.
"They're still going to kick us down the road. They're going to use their own people," the Gladwin resident said Thursday outside the prison.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
As soon as any of these TERRORISTS step foot on AMERICAL SOIL - they have ADDITIONAL RIGHTS. That is why Bush didn’t put them on U.S. soil. Be careful! These TERRORISTS that want to kill you will have RIGHTS that will be used to get them OUT of prison.
Just let them lose on the streets of Detroit
that will be plenty punishment
May not even have to house and feed them much longer
As soon as any of these TERRORISTS step foot on AMERICAN SOIL - they have ADDITIONAL RIGHTS. That is why Bush didn’t put them on U.S. soil.
Be careful!
These TERRORISTS that want to kill you will have RIGHTS that will be used to get them OUT of prison.
I wouldn’t want my family exposed to the danger of being a civilian prison guard of Islamic terrorists.
Weren’t there terrorist sleeper cells found in Michigan? Is this move for convenience of operation?
Would this make Dingell-Berry their Rep.?
The insanity and anti-Americanism is getting totally out of control.
I live in Michigan. Why the hell is the US government going to spend another couple of million dollars to “upgrade” Standish , when we have already bought and paid for the current facility in Gitmo???
Just to please the “Politically Correct” thing to do.
Suggestion: Take the terrorist prisoners on a “one way” helicopter ride to the Central Atlantic.
As I see it, the real problem is that putting these guys anywhere near a civilian population is asking for trouble.
While gang bosses may want their cronies on the outside to try to get them out, even American criminals are smart enough to see no future in suicide attacks.
The islamists however, have an endless supply of folks with names like Gambeesi, Fahreed, Mubdullah and such, who feel that a suicide attack to free their imprisoned leaders is their ticket to a particularly lecherous heaven.
Prisons are not set up to withstand military attacks, and many will die when the islamists try to retrieve their own.
The islamists need to go in the middle of a military base, with multiple layers of defense.
The guards don’t want them; we should listen.
Those horses done fled the barn with the Supreme Court of Kennedy.
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