Colorado: Guantanamo

Gov. Bill Ritter’s office pulled no punches Tuesday morning in responding to a report that the communication arm of the Colorado Senate Minority Office edited a radio interview to make it seem as though Ritter had changed his position on housing Guantanamo detainees in Colorado. “They’re just making stuff up,” Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer wrote in an e-mail to the Colorado Independent. “Nothing new for them, though.”

The spliced ColoradoSenateNews.com version of Monday’s interview with the governor on the Mike Rosen show is a 23-second audio clip that portrays Ritter as having capitulated to his critics, prepared to ship Gitmo detainees off to Pakistan.

It's refreshing to see the conservative Colorado Springs Gazette not catching the local GOP's collective vapors over the possibility that some detainees from Guantanamo Bay might be relocated to Florence's ultra-high security federal prison, Supermax.
Republican lawmakers pounced...gathering 35 signatures on a petition asserting that the nearly 250 Guantanamo detainees, many of them accused of membership in terrorist groups, would threaten "the safety and security of the communities in which they will ultimately be housed."

The petition, which was sent to Ritter this week, also expresses "grave concern about the economic and security risks that the relocation of Guantanamo detainees to Colorado pose for our state and local communities.

Republican lawmakers on Friday signed petitions protesting a possible transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Colorado, saying the state shouldn't be a dumping ground for terrorists.

"The type of terrorists these would be, I'd be ill at ease if I lived in Florence or Canon City or Pueblo West," said Republican Sen. Ken Kester of Las Animas. "I don't think we need 200 or 300 terrorists in Colorado. They will infiltrate the other convicts that are there."

President Barack Obama announced Thursday he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison, located on an American naval base in Cuba, that has held suspected terrorists since the start of the war in Iraq.