I can hear the Liberals whining now….
The Article: U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan (Via New York Times)
Quote:
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.
The reason why I would say that Liberals will whine about this, is because Bush said he would scale back American involvement in detention centers in Afghanistan. However, if you read the REST of this article. You will see why were having to get involved and stay involved.
Quote:
But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
(Snip!)
Faced with that, American officials said they wanted to replace the Bagram prison, a converted aircraft hangar that still holds some of the decrepit aircraft-repair machinery left by the Soviet troops who occupied the country in the 1980s. In its place the United States will build what officials described as a more modern and humane detention center that would usually accommodate about 600 detainees — or as many as 1,100 in a surge — and cost more than $60 million.
“Our existing theater internment facility is deteriorating,” said Sandra L. Hodgkinson, the senior Pentagon official for detention policy, in a telephone interview. “It was renovated to do a temporary mission. There is a sense that this is the right time to build a new facility.”
American officials also acknowledged that there are serious health risks to detainees and American military personnel who work at the Bagram prison, because of their exposure to heavy metals from the aircraft-repair machinery and asbestos.
“It’s just not suitable,” another Pentagon official said. “At some point, you have to say, ‘That’s it. This place was not made to keep people there indefinitely.’ ”
That point came about six months ago. It became clear to Pentagon officials that the original plan of releasing some Afghan prisoners outright and transferring other detainees to Afghan custody would not come close to emptying the existing detention center.
You see, this is not being done, so that the American Government can keep us in that country forever, as Liberals like Keith Olbermann and his hyperventilating special comments want us to believe. They’re doing this out of a human concern for Prisoners housed there, Yes, my friends, the United States is still a caring Country, that cares for the well-being of people, even those who would want to kill us.
I am writing this to prove a point, that even if President George W. Bush is an idiot, and Yes, I do believe that he is not the brightest bulb in the box, there are people still working in the United States Government, that do still possess a great deal of intelligence and still have the morals and integrity that this Nation is known for.
The New York Times’s Liberal bias aside, the article is quite informative as to the real conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. I suggest you read it.