"Close Guantanamo. Not Tomorrow, But This Afternoon."

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 589

Wow. Read these words of a prominent public figure regarding the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:

"'If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I'd close it. And I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?

'I would also do it because every morning, I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds. And so essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.

'We don't need it, and it's causing us far more damage than any good we get for it.'"

The bleeding heart defeatist liberal who spoke these words: none other than Colin Powell, appearing yesterday on Meet the Press. Yes, that Colin Powell. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former Secretary of State under George W. Bush. Yep. Him.

This argument is so over.