HUCKABEE THINKS GITMO IS 'TOO NICE'

THINK PROGRESS - During a campaign stop in Iowa, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee commented on the conditions at the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying that "the inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment" than "prisoners in Arkansas." "I hope our guys don't see this," added Huckabee. "They'll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo."

"If anything, it's too nice," said Huckabee. . .

In June, Huckabee said on CNN's Late Edition that "most of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo." At the time, he said we couldn't close the facility because hypothetically, "if we let somebody out" they could "come and fly an airliner into one of our skyscrapers."

FBI agents who worked at the facility have reported that detainees were subjected to harsh conditions, including "the use of growling dogs" to "intimidate detainees," at least as recently as 2004:

"Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors."

A recently released operations manual for the prison, dated March 28, 2003, "indicates that some prisoners were hidden from Red Cross representatives." Presumably, such 'no-access' detainees would have been hidden from visitors like Huckabee as well.