US to build huge detention facility in Afghanistan

NY Times:

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.

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.

The proposal for a new American prison at Bagram underscores the daunting scope and persistence of the United States military’s detention problem, at a time when Bush administration officials continue to say they want to close down the facility at Guantánamo Bay.

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Gitmo has suffered at the hands of a liberal information operation which was intended to make it difficult to operate that facility. Terrorist rights organizations working with liberal media outlets have demonized the facility despite the fact that it is well run and treats the enemy detainees fairly. American lawyers acting as useful idiots of al Qaeda have also done their worst to make the operation difficult.

My speculation is that detainees at Gitmo may be transferred back to Afghanistan. That certainly make more sense than bringing to the US where the ACLU and others will do what they can to set the terrorist free.

It is also probably asking too much of the current Afghan government to run a sound prison system. There is still too much corruption and the temptation to take bribes to free prisoners would be great.

I rather like the idea of making the useful idiots go the Afghanistan rather than a tropical island.