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First Guantanamo commander says shutdown is overdue

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (L), looks on, as Marine Corps Major General Mike Lehnert (R) speaks, during a press conference to announce the formation of the Veteran Education Opportunity Partnership to facilitate veterans' enrollment in California colleges, in Sacramento, California on March 22, 2006. (UPI Photo/Ken James)
1 of 4 | California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (L), looks on, as Marine Corps Major General Mike Lehnert (R) speaks, during a press conference to announce the formation of the Veteran Education Opportunity Partnership to facilitate veterans' enrollment in California colleges, in Sacramento, California on March 22, 2006. (UPI Photo/Ken James) | License Photo

DETROIT, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo in Cuba should be closed as quickly as possible, the U.S. Marine general who opened it said Thursday.

In an op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press, Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, now retired, said the detention center should never have been built in the first place. He said he discovered the first detainees "had little intelligence value, and there was insufficient evidence linking them to war crimes."

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"In retrospect, the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong," he said. "We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantánamo, both in terms of detention and torture. Our decision to keep Guantánamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States."

Lehnert said language in the defense funding bill now before Congress giving President Obama more freedom to transfer detainees to other countries is a "step forward." But he said the continued ban on bringing prisoners from Guantanamo to the United States for trial is "unwise and unnecessary."

Freeing prisoners is about "risk management," Lehnert said, adding that it is impossible to guarantee that everyone freed from Guantanmo will never try to harm the United States.

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"It is time that the American people and our politicians accepted a level of risk in the defense of our constitutional values, just as our service men and women have gone into harm's way time after time to defend our Constitution," he said.

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