All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Liz Cheney's organization Keep America Safe today released a mini-documentary featuring citizens of Standish, Michigan lashing out at the Obama administration's proposal to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the town's Standish Maximum Correctional Facility.

Standish is one of at least four sites being considered as potential transfer destinations for detainees, along with facilities in Montana, Colorado, and Illinois, according to the New York Times. The Detroit News reports that the Standish facility, which closed October 31st due to budget cuts, employed more than 250 people, making it the small town's largest employer. Nonetheless, some residents are reluctant to let their town play host to the 200 or so alleged terrorists facing transfer to the United States.

The video, which you can watch at left, includes interviews with citizens of Standish (which has a population just over 2,000 and is 97 percent white, according to last available census data) intercut with messages from Keep America Safe, all set to an ominous piano track.

"President Obama has ordered the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility closed," a message on the screen reads. "Hundreds of terrorists will be moved to prisons in the United States. Politicians want them placed in Standish, Michigan."

This message is followed by a woman speaking. "[Politicians] aren't listening to us little people in Standish," she says. "Because that's what we are. We're a small, small farm town. And we are not being listened to."

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Updated 5:39 p.m. ET

A former Congressman has joined with two retired generals and an Iraq war veteran in a push to pressure lawmakers to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. The group is calling upon Congress to "ignore the scare tactics" of former vice president Dick Cheney, who they accuse of leading "a concerted right-wing smear campaign" against closure of the facility.

On Tuesday the group, called "The National Campaign to Close Guantanamo," released a 30-second ad which you can see at left. The spot will run on national television for a week at a cost of $100,000; it urges viewers to sign an open letter to Congress lobbying for the shutdown of the facility.

"President Obama said we should close it," a narrator says in the ad. "Colin Powell agrees. But Congress stands in the way, continuing to follow the failed Bush/Cheney policies."

President Obama promised to close the facility within a year of taking office, but there are questions about whether that deadline will be met amid opposition from lawmakers concerned about the transfer of detainees to prisons on U.S. soil. Though House Democrats recently blocked a Republican effort to outlaw the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the U.S., members of both parties, fearing political repercussions, have been skittish about detainees coming to their states and districts.

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The task force created by President Obama to establish a way forward for the detainees at the U.S.'s military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba issued a preliminary report Monday night and asked the president for another six months in which to complete its work.

The Detention Policy Task Force is co-chaired by the attorney general and the secretary of defense and includes high-level representatives from the State Department, CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It's essentially charged with deciding whether to transfer the prisoners to countries willing to accept them or to prosecute them, although the Obama administration has complicated matters by proposing alternative pathways of prosecution (U.S. courts for some, military tribunals for others) and has kept open the option of continuing to detain those it doesn't feel it can convict.

White House officials briefed reporters on the developments Monday evening. According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, officials said that of the 240 detainees at Guantanamo as of Jan. 22, "substantially more than 50” decisions have been made to transfer detainees to other countries.

Officials said that a “significant number of decisions” have been made to subject other detainees to prosecution, Knoller reported, but officials would not provide more specific numbers.

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Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy told CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer Sunday that nobody in America, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, is "above the law."

Leahy was responding to a report in the New York Times that Cheney ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress.

"If, as the New York Times says, we have the vice president of the United States telling people to break the law, now that's a pretty serious matter," Leahy said on CBS' "Face The Nation." "Either he did, or he didn't. If he did, that's something we ought to know."

He said finding out what happened is important because "usually if something is done wrong by one [administration] and it's exposed, the next one tends to behave themselves."

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the Guantanamo Bay detainment facility a "perfect place" for keeping terrorists, crediting the military prison with having protected America from another attack following 9/11.

He characterized President Obama's efforts to close the facility as a bid to make the United States "more popular" in Europe, and criticized the president's "arbitrary deadline" for shutting it down.

"I don't think this is a problem that needs fixing," McConnell said on Face The Nation, arguing that other countries seem hesitant to house detainees, and bringing them onto American soil would open a whole other can of worms.

"If you bring them into this country and try them, then presumably they are going to be given the protections of the Bill of Rights," McConnell said.

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House Republicans introduced the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act last month.

The act is "aimed at stopping the transfer or release of terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay prison into the United States," according to a release from Republican Leader John Boehner. It prohibits the Obama administration from "transferring or releasing" Gitmo detainees without approval from the elected officials in the state to which the detainee would be sent.

But while the legislation itself deals specifically with Guantanamo Bay detainees – not all of whom, it should be noted, are necessarily "terrorists" – its name signals a broader position: that anyone considered a terrorist should be kept off of U.S. soil.

And yet there are already a number of terrorists who live in America – or, more specifically, in American prisons. Among them are Ramzi Yousef, convicted masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Sept. 11th conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

The Washington Post reported last month that "thirty-three international terrorists, many with ties to al-Qaeda, reside in a single federal prison in Florence, Colo." That supermax facility is where Yousef and Moussaoui are held.

Which raises the question: If Boehner and other House Republicans believe terrorists should be kept out of America, what do they believe should be done with the ones who are already here?

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Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) held a press conference today forcefully pressing for passage of the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act, which would prohibit the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees by U.S. troops.

"To release the photos is, to me, sheer voyeurism," Lieberman said. "It's a disclosure without a purpose, and it's disclosure that brings great risk."

Lieberman said President Obama "did the right thing" in opposing the release of such photos last month. He said doing so would "lead to people entering the war against the United States."

"In our opinion, the release of these photos -- for no purpose at all, no good purpose -- will lead to the death of Americans, including, particularly, those brave Americans who serve us in the military," said Lieberman.

Graham suggested that the two senators would effectively shut down the Senate via filibuster if Congress does not pass the legislation. "We're not going to do any more business in the Senate," he said. "Nothing's going forward until we get this right."

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With the first Guantanamo detainee being relocated to New York today to face trial, Republican members of Congress are expressing strong opinions against bringing the prisoners to American soil.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a statement today condemning the transfer of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa, to the United States.

"This is the first step in the Democrats' plan to import terrorists into America. Without a plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the Administration has made the decision to begin transferring these terrorists into the United States, in spite of the overwhelming opposition of the American people and serious questions from Members of Congress of both parties," he stated.

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CBS News has learned that President Obama spent an hour and a half today meeting with the leaders of a dozen or so human rights groups, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Many of these groups have been quite critical of the administration in recent weeks.

He spoke to them about various policies in the war on terror, including his stance on tribunals, state secrets and the detainee photos.

One attendee said that the meeting was "energetic" but that none of the participants had their minds changed. That person felt that if the president doesn't change his mind and change direction from some of the Bush policies, that this historic administration could be wasted. Another attendee said he was "disappointed."

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UPDATED Previously unseen images* showing what appears to be prisoner abuse on the part of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed by an Australian television station, which reportedly acquired them following the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2006.

A slideshow of fifteen of the photos is here. Though portions are blocked out, they are extremely graphic.

Among the shots: A picture of a soldier and four nearly naked detainees, one of whom has the words "I'M A RAPEIST" written on his buttocks; a picture of a prisoner cowering while surrounded by dogs and soldiers with guns; a picture of a naked man with an unidentified white liquid coming out of his mouth; a shot of a naked detainee with eight large red welts slightly above his buttocks; a photo of a smiling soldier kneeling next to a detainee strapped down near the floor; a photo of a naked prisoner hanging upside down from the top of a bunk bed; a picture of a soldier who appears poised to punch a shackled detainee; and pictures of what appear to be the corpses of prisoners.

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