Home of Supermax does not want jihadis

NY Times:

Prison is a way of life here, and always has been. The old territorial prison started it all in 1868 at the end of Main Street, anchoring a community and an economy with its massive tan stone walls and turrets. Generations later, more than 5,000 inmates in state and federal lockups, from minimum security to the so-called supermax, ring the town like a bracelet.

But when it comes to the idea of transferring those suspected or convicted of terrorism from the prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to federal high-security prisons like the one just down the road in Florence, as the Obama administration has proposed, Lyle Jacobson draws the line.

“It would make us a target,” said Mr. Jacobson, an 84-year-old retired accountant. “I think it’s very dangerous.”

Mr. Jacobson, who said he was a prisoner of war in Germany for nine months near the end of World War II, said he was not so worried about escapes. The prisons are secure enough, he said, and in fact there have been no escapes from the Administrative Maximum prison in Florence, the only one in the federal system. Rather, it is the international attention — a bull’s-eye for terrorists and their allies — that he fears could be drawn around this part of southeast Colorado.

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This is a political issue that Obama is on the wrong side of and if he attempts to force it, he will do further damage to his presidency. He is already seen as arrogant by many in this country and his wrongheaded desire to close Gitmo to please liberals in Europe is going to cost here.