America ought to be “proud” of its record of prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay, particularly since the facility houses primarily “savages,” said Sen. Tom Cotton.
“The people that are now left at Guantanamo Bay, approximately 120 terrorists, are not innocent goat herders — there’s no one there who is not a hardened terrorist,” The Arkansas Republican said Monday on Fox News’s “The Kelly File.”
“We can’t expect our soldiers in the middle of a battle in 2001 to be CSI detectives — they are there to fight and win our country’s war, and that means taking captive terrorists who have a clear known intent to attack Americans whenever and wherever they can if they are released from Guantanamo Bay,” he said.
Mr. Cotton’s comments come as President Obama has ordered the release of several prisoners from Guantanamo and continues to advocate for the closing of the base.
But Mr. Cotton said their release is a risk to America.
“If they didn’t want to be detained indefinitely, they shouldn’t have taken up arms against Americans — they shouldn’t have helped mastermind the terrorist attack that killed 3,000 Americans,” he said. “We should preserve Guantanamo Bay as a critical part in the overall war on terror. We should be sending more terrorists there. … We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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