Gitmo: Geert's s Got It Right

"We have to close Guantanamo because it symbolizes for me everything that is wrong with this war on terror," Peters said.

But at least one member disagreed.

"Let's not forget we are in a state of war — not only the United States but also my country — with Islamic terrorists," said the far right Freedom Party leader, Geert Wilders. "I think we could only learn from Guantanamo."

Note "far right" - what bullshit.

Dutch lawmakers offended by Rep. Lantos  hat tip Andrew Bostom

By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer

Dutch lawmakers who visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison this week said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay."

And while I have my disagreements with Lantos on issues, he nailed this.

Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peter, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took notes of the remarks.

"You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany," Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.

"It was a diplomatically strange situation," Peters said. "The mere suggestion that the United States could be compared with Nazi Germany is so flawed." It was not the first time that Lantos had offended European political circles. In May, he lashed out at the former leaders of France and Germany. His comments, which included calling former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a "political prostitute," provoked a rebuke from German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The lawmakers, from the Dutch House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, were invited to visit Guantanamo and Washington by the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Roland Arnall. The lawmakers also met senior Bush administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

Members of the delegation said they were given an extensive tour of the Guantanamo Bay prison, which has been heavily criticized by human rights groups.

Some of the lawmakers said that while they found the physical conditions of the prison acceptable, they remain concerned that prisoners were not being given proper legal treatment.

Most of the delegation called for the closing of Guantanamo.

"We have to close Guantanamo because it symbolizes for me everything that is wrong with this war on terror," Peters said.

"We need to work out an international deal on the future of Guantanamo Bay," said Hans van Baalen, of the Liberals, who led the delegation.

Really Hans? I strongly suggest you get your own house in order first.

From Belien here today;

One of the greatest injustices to the victims of racism, and in particular the holocaust, is the trivialization of it. One does not have to agree with the Dutch “Islamophobic” anti-immigration politicians Geert Wilders or Rita Verdonk, but what kind of person writes something like: “Whenever I see people such as Wilders and Verdonk I think of the Kristallnacht! The moment the Jews were rounded up...”?

People who write such things do not care about the suffering of the Jews. They merely abuse the Nazi crimes for their own petty political objectives. The example quoted above comes from the Dutch correspondent of the far-left Belgian blog Yelloman. This blogger is an intolerant, immoral Stalinist activist. The politicians in the European Parliament, however, are hardly any better.

Comments

[JCL154]

I don't see the problem. If the Dutch want us to close Gitmo, why don't we put the prisoners on their planes & they can take them back to Holland.