Harry Reid: Pretend Stupid or Truly Stupid?

Alex Massie

Wednesday, 20th May 2009

The great thing about Washington is its variety. Sometimes it's the Republicans who infuriate you and sometimes it's the Democrats whose bone-headed nitwittery is singularly depressing. Today it's Harry Reid's turn to annoy:

"QUESTION: If the United States -- if the United States thinks that these people should be held, why shouldn’t they be held in the United States? Why shouldn’t the U.S. take those risks, the attendant risk of holding them, since it’s the one that says they should be held?

REID: I think there’s a general feeling, as I’ve already said, that the American people, and certainly the Senate, overwhelmingly doesn’t want terrorists to be released in the United States. And I think we’re going to stick with that.

QUESTION: What about in imprisoned in the United States?

REID: If you’re...

(CROSSTALK)

REID: If people are -- if terrorists are released in the United States, part of what we don’t want is them be put in prisons in the United States. We don’t want them around the United States."

To the extent that the Plain People of America* suspect that closing Guantanamo means letting its 240 inmates rampage across America as though they were remaking Natural Born Killers then perhaps that's because politicians in Washington have done a poor job in stressing that, actually, they'd still be imprisoned.

Then again, with leaders of the calibre of Harry Reid - altogether too small a man for the position he holds - who can be surprised that mendacity and stupidity prevail?

And, you know, if there's one thing the United States is very good at it's locking people up. Now perhaps this is all just a canny delaying tactic, buying Obama time to draw up a comprehensive plan for closing Guantanamo, but I doubt it. There's little in Harry Reid's past, as far as I can recall, to suggest he's capable of such subtlety. A degree of low cunning, yes, but not much more than that. And, as we see, a dollop of stupidity so impressive that you half assume it can't really be, well, real...

*Not to be confused with the Plains People of America who are fewer in number these days and have had a much tougher time of it.

[Via Hilzoy who also has lots worth reading on the Uighers at Gitmo here and here]

Filed under: Democrats (60 more articles) , Prison (6 more articles) , Terrorism (116 more articles) , Washington (112 more articles)

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Conservative Cabbie

May 20th, 2009 5:08pm Report this comment

Alex

"buying Obama time to draw up a comprehensive plan for closing Guantanamo"

It's all well and good blaming the demagoguing of prisoners roaming free about America but what about the President who demagogued the closing of Guantanamo without the faintest idea about how to do it. Should that be the way politics is done now? Act first, think later. To take the current rightist meme - What if Bush had done that?

Alf Tupper

May 20th, 2009 6:27pm Report this comment

The way I understand it is that the act of being imprisoned on American soil, grants prisoners certain rights to which they are not entitled in their present situation.

It's fair to assume that once in possession of any such rights, these would be vigorously exerted, creating great media interest. The ultimate possibility of course, is that these people could indeed end up walking the streets of US cities.

Why would anyone in authority want to make that more likely?

ndm

May 20th, 2009 6:54pm Report this comment

With the news that Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sell off San Quentin to ease the budget crisis perhaps the Feds could just buy it and move Guantanamo there. After all it is about time the prison-industrial complex finally gained some respect and the "worst of the worst" as Rumsfeld was wont to describe them.

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