Guantanamo gets backing in GOP

A lightning rod for international criticism, the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not long ago appeared headed for closure. President Bush and his top advisors said they wanted to shutter the controversial lockup.

But the latest attempt to shut it down is facing collapse: The detention facility has been embraced by many Republicans as a potent political symbol in their quest to seize the terrorism issue ahead of next year’s elections.

GOP presidential candidates have jockeyed to demonstrate their support for the prison. One candidate has called for doubling its use. Another praised the menu and health plan offered to detainees.

The Senate Republican leader has accused Democrats of wanting to move terrorists “into American communities.”

And the president, who last year told German television that he “would like to end Guantanamo,” is now threatening to veto any move to “micromanage the detention of enemy combatants.”

“It’s a Republican litmus test this year,” complained Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, one of the few GOP lawmakers calling for the swift closure of Guantanamo.

“The Republican Party has won two elections on the issue of fear and terrorism,” Hagel said. “[It’s] going to try again.”

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) still hope to attach a measure to the 2008 defense policy bill that would compel the administration to develop a plan for relocating the roughly 340 detainees at Guantanamo.

The measure would force the facility to be closed within a year and would prohibit the transfer of detainees to detention centers outside the United States.

Despite months of lobbying and criticism of the prison at home and abroad, Feinstein and Harkin are struggling to attract any substantial Republican support. Said a frustrated Harkin: “This should have been a slam-dunk.”

Earlier this year, it looked as if it could be.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March reinforced Bush’s stated goal of shuttering Guantanamo.

“He is clear to us all the time,” Rice told reporters. “He would like to see it closed. We all would.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also expressed a desire to close the facility. He argued that international objections to the prison undermined the credibility of any trials conducted there.

And in June, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if it were up to him, he would “get rid of Guantanamo.” He called the facility a “major, major problem” for the United States internationally.

Feinstein and other congressional Democrats have repeatedly echoed that argument. “I don’t think there is any issue that has galvanized hatred in other countries like Guantanamo,” Feinstein said recently.

Although in recent years the administration has slowly reduced the number of detainees held at Guantanamo, the facility continues to be a focus for human rights groups and many of America’s European allies, which routinely condemn the prison.

As Feinstein and other Democrats have pressed their case, leading Republican politicians have made Guantanamo into something of a rallying cry, akin to the party’s traditional tough-on-crime message.

At the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina in May, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called for doubling the size of Guantanamo and continuing the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on detainees.

“I want them in Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil,” Romney said.

In September, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani won applause at a GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire when he derided calls to close Guantanamo. He compared those urging such a move to judges who “would release criminals into the street.”

At the same debate, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, mocked the suggestion that detainees were being mistreated at Guantanamo.

“Those guys get taxpayer-paid-for prayer rugs,” Hunter said. “They have prayer five times a day. They’ve all gained weight. The last time I looked at the menu, they had honey-glazed chicken and rice pilaf on Friday.”

On Capitol Hill, Republicans have argued that moving detainees to military brigs or maximum-security prisons in America, as Feinstein and Harkin have called for, could increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack in the United States.

“They would be magnets,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading opponent of granting detainees additional access to federal courts. Graham last year helped craft a system of military tribunals to try terrorism detainees, whose legal status has complicated debate about the future of Guantanamo. His plan is now being reviewed by the courts. He said last week that consideration of the issue should be delayed until that review was complete.

“I think in a year from now, we’ll understand the legal rules of the road in terms of how to detain and try these people,” Graham said. “I’d like to know what the law is before we begin to move people all around.”

Like the GOP presidential candidates, other Republican lawmakers have seen the debate as a political opportunity.

In July, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced a nonbinding measure expressing opposition to releasing Guantanamo detainees “into American society” or transferring them “into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods.”

McConnell said on the floor of the Senate: “Six years ago, no one would have thought about deliberately bringing terrorists into American communities, but some of our friends on the other side of the aisle feel differently.” He warned that under the Feinstein-Harkin proposal, detainees would be moved “into facilities in cities and small towns in places such as California and Illinois and Kentucky.”

McConnell’s measure passed 94-3.

Feinstein and Harkin expressed hope last week that they would be able to bring their Guantanamo provision up for a vote soon. But chances appear slim that it will get the Republican support needed to break an almost certain filibuster.

When Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) pushed a measure last week to give detainees at Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities habeas corpus rights to challenge their detentions in federal court, they were able to muster only six GOP votes.

Forty-two Republicans voted against it, and the proposal fell four votes short of the 60-vote supermajority needed in order for debate to go forward.

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noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes contributed to this report.