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Hunter: Bush team split over closing Guantanamo
The White House is split over whether to close a U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a Republican lawmaker said on Sunday, as a magazine reported a top al Qaeda suspect interrogated there was made to bark like a dog and subjected to Christina Aguilera music.U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said some members of the Bush administration wanted to close the camp to end a high-profile debate over allegations of abuse at Guantanamo. The military jail for suspected terrorists has been criticized as a modern "gulag" by Amnesty International, and it has become a hated symbol for many Muslims. "I think they're divided. I think ... some members of the White House have come to the conclusion that the legend is different than the fact," Hunter, a California Republican, told "Fox News Sunday." "And when that's the case, you go with the legend that somehow Guantanamo has been a place of abuse. And you close it down and you shorten the stories, you shorten the heated debate and you get if off the table and you move on," he said. After calls to close the camp from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and others, President Bush said last week he was "exploring all alternatives." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, said he knew of no one in the administration who was thinking of closing Guantanamo. A White House spokesman, asked about Hunter's comments, said, "We should never limit our options." Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox, in an interview on Friday to be broadcast on Monday, there was "no plan to close" Guantanamo, but he cited Bush as saying options were under review "on a continuous basis." "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people," he said. BARKING, NO PRAYER, AGUILERA MUSIC Time magazine on Sunday disclosed new details of methods at the camp, citing an interrogation log of al Qaeda suspect Mohammad al-Kahtani. Techniques included inflicting a "sissy slap" with an inflated latex glove, forcing Kahtani to "bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog," and rejecting a request that he be allowed to pray. Interrogators also played music by pop singer Christina Aguilera to keep him from dozing off, Time said. Kahtani, a Saudi citizen, is suspected to have been an intended fifth member of the team that hijacked United Airlines flight 93 during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Pentagon said in a statement. He had tried and failed to enter the United States in August 2001, and was captured on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2002. Under questioning, Kahtani "provided valuable information helping the U.S. to understand the recruitment of terrorist operatives, logistics and other planning aspects of the 9/11 terrorist attack," the Pentagon said. It described the document cited in Time as a "compromised classified interrogation log." The log spanned 50 days in the winter of 2002 and 2003, when Rumsfeld approved more coercive interrogation techniques. Time said water was poured Kahtani's head to keep him awake in midnight sessions. It also said Kahtani was questioned in a room decorated with pictures of Sept. 11 victims, was made to urinate in his pants, and forced to wear pictures of scantily clad women around his neck. He asked to commit suicide at one point, and was hooked up to a heart monitor after he became seriously dehydrated from refusing to drink water and his heartbeat slowed, the magazine said. Posted by: too true 2005-06-12 |
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