Saturday, March 29, 2008

Five former secretaries of State call for Gitmo closure.

Thinkprogress:



At a University of Georgia roundtable discussion Thursday, five former secretaries of State — Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, and Colin Powell — agreed that the next president should move quickly to close Guantanamo Bay. Highlights from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Powell, who was in office when the notorious prison opened in Cuba, was the first Thursday to call for it to be shuttered. The most recent holder of the office on the stage, Powell served the current president from 2001 to 2005.

“Our image abroad has dropped significantly,” Powell said. He put some of that blame on his former boss. […]

Guantanamo “gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally,” [James] Baker said. “I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen, even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests, and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate.”

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