Please Support Senator Harkin's Bill To Close Guantanamo In 120 Days

The ACLU just sent an advisory that Senator Tom Harkin has introduced a bill that would require the Guantanamo prison/torture center, also known as America's Shame, to be closed within 120 days after enactment.

Now is a more critical time than ever to have our voices heard on the question of torture and America's Shame. At the last Republican Candidates Presidential debate only one candidate, McCain, spoke out against torture and he was greeted with thunderous silence. Those who spoke in favor of torture were greeted with deafening applause accompanied whoops and hollers. These sniveling traitors to the Constitution included Guiliani who said he would do "anything" to get information, Romney who would  "double the size of Guantanamo, and Tancredo who pleaded for help from Jack Bauer.

Here’s a summary of what the bill does:

• It requires the President to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within 120 days of enactment.
 
• Within 120 days of enactment, the detainees will be either sent to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth to await trial or serve their sentences or transferred to another country that will not torture, abuse, or otherwise persecute the detainee.
 
• For each detainee being held at Guantanamo Bay, the government will have 120 days to either charge the detainee with a federal crime or transfer him to his home country or another country, provided they will not engage in tortured, abused, or persecuted. The government may have an additional renewal period of 120 days to hold the detainee if it is preparing charges and has a logistical need for additional time.
 
• The bill ends the practice of indefinite detention without charge of hundreds of detainees--most who have been held more than four years, and many who have been held more than five years without charge and without even knowing the reason that they are being held.
 
• The detainees who are charged will be detained in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth while awaiting trial, during trial, and during their sentences.  This is the military's prison specifically designated, designed, and built by the Defense Department to hold national security prisioners.

The bill will provide additional funds to prosecute and defend cases brought against the detainees, and for costs incurred by the government or the region in transferring or detaining prisoners.

Please go to the ACLU website above, or any other place, to urge your Senators to support this bill.