Sen. Joe Lieberman believes that Guantanamo Bay's bad reputation isn't deserved. "You could not find a better, more humane facility for a detention center in the world," Lieberman told ABC's Terry Moran Sunday.
Though his claims are not supported by numerous reports from Cuba, they were not challenged on ABC. In March an ex-detainee reportedly said the prison was in fact worse since Obama was elected, saying guards wanted to "take their last revenge."
In July, The Raw Story reported the first full-time female FBI agent stationed at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba said she witnessed a drunken “spring break” atmosphere during her tenure — and has photographs to prove it.
Just before Christmas, a Somali just home from eight years at Guantanamo told Agence France-Presse the prison was "hell on Earth", and alleged torture there had scarred some of his fellow inmates.
On ABC's This Week Lieberman reiterated his opposition to the Obama administration plan to repatriate a group of Yemenis. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have joined with Lieberman in calling on Obama to stop the plan.
Lieberman thinks Obama's promise to close the detention center is a mistake. "The president is in charge of what happens there now so some of the abuses of the past are not going to happen [in the future]," said Lieberman. This positioning might seem to make sense to ABC viewers when it goes unchallenged on a Sunday morning talk show, but as ProPublica reported before Christmas, the Obama administration cannot be trusted when discussing even its own handling of Gitmo detainees.
In describing efforts to send some detainees home or to third-country hosts, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, "More of those transfers have taken place in the past eight months than have taken — than took place in the previous eight years."
In fact, in the last eight months, 31 detainees were transferred from Guantanamo to other countries. In the eight years before that, more than 520 detainees were sent home or to a third country.
This video is from ABC's This Week, broadcast Jan. 3, 2010.
