During an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Rep. Michele Bachmann alleged that: “We are conducting a war on terror, but when we have–we have no jail for terrorists. So what this means is either we kill them or we release them.”
This struck me — and I suppose many others — as hard to believe.
Could this actually be true?
In fact, the United States military currently operates several jails that house international terrorists. The correct nomenclatures for these “jails” includes detention facilities, internment centers, or camps, etc.
The largest facility we know about is the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP) in Afghanistan. It is formally known as Bagram Theater Internment Facility (BTIF) — and informally — as “The Other GITMO.”
The second largest is actually the facility in Guantanamo Bay (GITMO).
While it is true that GITMO no longer receives new prisoners — that’s certainly not the case regarding other facilities. As Salon reported in June, “President Obama has presided over a threefold increase in the number of detainees being held at the controversial military detention center at Bagram Air Base, the Afghan cousin of the notorious prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.”