{"id":14005,"date":"2007-12-21T16:35:50","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T21:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14005.html"},"modified":"2007-12-21T16:35:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-21T21:35:50","slug":"huckabee-thinks-guantanamo-bay-prison-is-too-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/huckabee-thinks-guantanamo-bay-prison-is-too-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Huckabee thinks Guantanamo Bay prison is ‘too nice’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee has had quite a bit of trouble lately explaining the Wayne Dumond scandal. In Republican circles for the last generation or two, there’s nothing worse than being labeled “soft on crime.” In Huckabee’s case, to borrow Josh Marshall’s description<\/a>, he “pushed for the release of a serial rapist who subsequently went on to rape and kill another woman … because a bunch of anti-Clinton whack-jobs convinced him that the guy was a victim of the system.” Worse, when confronted with questions about it, Huckabee lied about<\/a> what transpired.<\/p>\n

So, what’s a presidential hopeful to do? How does the man who pushed for Wayne Dumond’s release convince the Republican Party that he’s “tough”? Apparently, Huckabee has come up with a plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked about Guantanamo, Mike Huckabee said he had visited the facility and said it was “disappointing” that military personnel were eating meals that averaged $1.60 while the detainees were eating Halal meals that cost over $4 each.<\/p>\n

“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guantanamo. If anything, it’s too nice.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in May, Mitt Romney did his best to appear “tough” himself, announcing<\/a> at a debate, “Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”<\/p>\n

But Huckabee, who seems to know even less about national security and international affairs, apparently wants to kick things up a notch, claiming that Gitmo is “too nice.”
\n
\nMatt at TP helped highlight<\/a> how foolish this really is:<\/p>\n

Huckabee may have seen “nice” conditions when he visited Guantanamo. But FBI agents who worked at the facility have reported that detainees were subjected to harsh conditions, including “the use of growling dogs” to “intimidate detainees,” at least as recently as 2004:<\/p>\n

“Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors.”<\/p>\n

A recently released operations manual for the prison, dated March 28, 2003, “indicates that some prisoners were hidden from Red Cross representatives.” Presumably, such “no-access” detainees would have been hidden from visitors like Huckabee as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that’s all right, because Huckabee, who doesn’t know<\/a> what the National Intelligence Estimate is, and who thinks Thomas Friedman and Frank Gaffney have similar worldviews<\/a>, visited Gitmo and concluded the detention facility is “too nice.”<\/p>\n

He’s a credible expert whose analysis on this deserves to be taken seriously, right?<\/p>\n

Post Script<\/i>: On a related note, be sure to check out Lee Stranahan’s latest gem<\/a> on Huckabee. Hilarious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee has had quite a bit of trouble lately explaining the Wayne Dumond scandal. In Republican circles for the last generation or two, there’s nothing worse than being labeled “soft on crime.” In Huckabee’s case, to borrow Josh Marshall’s description, he “pushed for the release of a serial rapist who subsequently went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}