On ABC's This Week (video here. ) Sen. Jim Webb said no Gitmo detainees, including the Uighurs, should be brought to the United States:
SENATOR JIM WEBB
The situation with the Chinese Uighurs that you're talking about, on the one hand it can be argued that they were simply conducting dissident activities against the government of China. On the other, they accepted training from al Qaeda, and as a result, they have taken part in terrorism. I don't believe they should come to the United States.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) Not to the United States and not Virginia.
SENATOR JIM WEBB
No, I don't believe so.
Webb also said it's unreasonable to close Gitmo by January 1:
SENATOR JIM WEBB
We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions in Guantanamo to try these cases. There are cases against international law. These aren't people who were in the United States committing a crime in the United States. These are people who were brought to Guantanamo for international terrorism. I do not believe they should be tried in the United States.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) Yet back in, back in January you supported the President's decision to close Guantanamo.
SENATOR JIM WEBB
I think Guantanamo has become the great Rorschach test of how we feel about international terrorism. We should at the right time close Guantanamo, but I don't think that it should be closed in terms of transferring people here.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) Well, but I just want to press this one more time because actually in January, on January 23rd you said the President has given a reasonable time line in sorting this out. You no longer believe it's reasonable?
SENATOR JIM WEBB
Well, no, I don't actually. You know, having sat down with my staff and gone through the numbers in detail and, and looking at, you know, the facilities that have been built there and coming to the point where I have to, you know, personally weigh in on this in a detailed way, I think what we're doing is the right way.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) So you will not support funding for closing down Guantanamo?
SENATOR JIM WEBB
We should close down Guantanamo at the right time. What - I think what's happened is Guantanamo has become the issue rather than how we process these people who are detained there. Let's process them with the right rules of law, the right due process within the constraints of how we have to handle these cases with military intelligence and that sort of thing, but the facility is there at Guantanamo and then close it down.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) So the January deadline should be relaxed. The President should not meet that January deadline. You don't believe Guantanamo should be closed...
SENATOR JIM WEBB
I think we should, you know I think we should defer to the judgment of the administration who is looking at this. I think we all are moving toward the right direction but we shouldn't be creating artificial time lines.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS
(Off-camera) But the administration has said January.
SENATOR JIM WEBB
They said a lot of things and taken a look and said some other things, so let's have - let's process these people in a very careful way and then take care of it.
Also, after the jump, see the Senate Republicans' compilation of Democrats opposed to releasing detainees in the United States:
SEN. JIM WEBB (D-VA): "I Think That The People Who Have Been Held In Guantanamo Are Being Charged Essentially For Acts Of International Terror, For Acts Of War, And They Don't Belong In Judicial System, And They Don't Belong In Our Jails. … [T]here Are Facilities Built In Guantanamo Right Now That Are Able To Do That." (ABC's "This Week," 5/17/09)
SEN. MAX BAUCUS (D-MT): "We're Not Going To Bring Al-Qaeda To Big Sky Country - No Way, Not On My Watch." ("Bid To Lure Gitmo Prisoners To Montana Nixed," USA Today, 4/24/09)
SEN. JON TESTER (D-MT): Said He Is "Against Any Proposal To Bring Guantanamo Detainees To Montana." ("Bid To Lure Gitmo Prisoners To Montana Nixed," USA Today, 4/24/09)
