The GOP's Guantanamo Scare Tactics

I had the pleasure last night of attending a discussion at Radio City Music Hall between Karl Rove and James Carville. It was certainly entertaining, with plenty of finger-pointing, raised voices and Carvillian theatrics. When the conversation came to closing Guantanamo, we heard Karl Rove return to a common theme - that there "aren't enough empty Supermax cells for the Guantanamo prisoners."

This argument drives me crazy. It rings so clearly of the scare tactics we got from Rove and friends for eight years and it is simply not true. The claim that a nation that imprisons 2.4 million people can't find cells for 241 people is simply preposterous. It also exposes the fallacy of the "lock-em-up" argument for extended incarceration. If we believe our maximum security prisons were unsafe, why are they ok for serial killers?

We absolutely have room for Guantanamo detainees in our Supermax prisons. Their conditions won't improve much over Guantanamo - but Rove and friends aren't concerned about their treatment anyway. This is a moving-target argument (a specialty of Rove's). It diverts the discussion in a non-productive direction and seeks to stall action on an important policy reform - to bring Guantanamo prisoners onto U.S. soil and under the rule of our Constitution. Rove's aim here is not to keep America safe but to derail Obama's efforts to close Guantanamo.

Rove seems to forget that our prisons already hold terrorists safely - the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado already holds convicted terrorists like "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. . Michelle Malkin echoed Rove's argument last week and wrote that Florence doesn't have room for anyone else. Even if Florence is indeed full and we can't bear to transfer some of the aging inmates and drug prisoners there to a maximum security facility, there are plenty of other options - it might just take some cooperation between the federal and state systems.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday that he would be willing to house suspected terrorists from Guantanamo in an Illinois Supermax. There is a federal high security facility in downstate Illinois, but also a state supermax with plenty of room at Tamms.

We could safely house the prisoners at Guantanamo at a simple high-security facility - Supermaxes often amount to their own form of torture and we need to be careful not to create another domestic Guantanamo. In the past I've advocated for the closure of Tamms, or at least reforms to bring them into compliance with international human rights standards. Prisoners there are under solitary confinement 23 hours a day, with no end in sight.

But because I find it important for our international image that we close Guantanamo, I think moving them somewhere like Tamms would be an acceptable compromise. Reforming practices in our domestic supermaxes is an important goal and shouldn't be sidelined. But moving 241 suspected terrorists to these facilities will only bring them more visibility and will perhaps lead to reforms that affect all supermax inmates. We can't let the red herring of crowded supermaxes derail the closure of Guantanamo. It's an affront to all of the work we've done building the world's biggest prison system.