Powell: Close Guantanamo prison, try detainees in U.S. territory

The U.S. prison in Guantanamo should be closed, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says – “not tomorrow, but this afternoon.”

From the AP article:

“I would also do it because every morning, I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds,” Powell said. “And so essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.”

“We don't need it, and it's causing us far more damage than any good we get for it,” he said.

The naval base prison is convenient to the Administration because its location is under U.S. control, but not in U.S. territory and in a legal no-man’s land. And because it is on the only military base we have overseas where we don’t care one whit what the host government thinks.