Appearing on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show on Friday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okl.) declared that his host and interviewer -- the infamous Watergate burglar -- is an authority on the Gitmo debate because he has served time in federal prison.
The Oklahoma Republican made the declaration in the process of defending the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as "state of the art" and the type of place where the main problem facing detainees is "obesity."
"These guys have never eaten so well in their lives!" Inhofe declared. "So, anyway, let's just go ahead and have the trials there. If we have to leave them there for the rest of their lives, that's fine -- either that or execute them. You know, these guys are not criminals. These are terrorist detainees, and there's a big difference. You put those into our incarceration system and integrate them with the prison population, by definition these guys teach other people to be terrorists. A guy might be in there for stealing hubcaps, he's going to come out a terrorist. We don't want that. The best thing to do is keep Gitmo open."
At this point Liddy -- who is now a fringe voice in conservative media and a leading spokesperson for the buy-gold movement -- chimed in, warning that to move terrorists to a supermax facility in America is to invite a massive attack on that facility.
"Yeah, you know, I've been -- I spent five years in nine different prisons in this country and one thing I observed from there, they're all constructed so as to keep people in. They are very vulnerable to an attack upon the exterior. And these terrorist people can get their terrorist buddies to make an attack on the exterior and, you know, blow a hole in it and let them all out."
"I'm glad you said that," Inhofe replied, "because, see, you speak with authority on that."
(H/T: Media Matters)