Hard-luck Montana town pushes to house Gitmo detainees

[JohnBrowdie]

this is such an odd story.  how desperate has your economic situation got to be when your solution to unemployment is to build a jail?  and then how hosed has the state of montana got to be for the political situation in the state capital to ruin the plan?

I don't think the montanans really want 300 al quada prisoners in their backyard.  these guys live to die for their cause, and they are only still on this earth in the first place because the armed forces captured them before they could martyr themselves.  which, yes, tends to imply that these guys sorta suck at the whole "blow your ****ing self up' thing.

Hard-luck Montana town pushes to house Gitmo detainees

HARDIN, Montana (CNN) -- The tiny town of Hardin, Montana, is offering an answer to a very thorny question: Where should the nation put terror detainees if the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is shut down by the end of the year as President Obama has pledged?

 Hardin, population 3,400, sits in the southeast corner of Montana, in the state's poorest county. Its small downtown is almost deserted at midday. The Dollar Store is going out of business. The Hardin Mini Mall is already shut. The town needs jobs -- and fast.

Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The jail was ready for prisoners two years ago, but has yet to house a single prisoner.

People here say politics in the capital of Helena has kept it empty. But the city council last month voted 5-0 to back a proposal to bring Gitmo detainees -- some of the most hardened terrorists in the world -- to the facility. Video Watch town's fight to be Gitmo West »

"It would bring jobs. Believe it or not, it would even bring hope and opportunity," Greg Smith, Hardin's economic development director, told CNN.

But a decision on whether it becomes a reality is a long way off. The state's congressional leaders have lined up against the plan. "Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state," Max Baucus, the state's senior Democratic senator, wrote to Smith. "These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/26/montana.gitmo.west/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

[Wretched Excess]

maybe all the good opportunities for leper colonies and uranium storage facilities were taken, and gitmo terrorists were all that were left.  I read somewhere else that they have applied for a gaming license so they can open a russian roulette casino.

if the good people of hardin hang on just a while longer, maybe the obamites will pick their cottage prison industry* to send all of the capitalists (if there are any left) after The Obamagenda is completed.  I mean, I'm assuming that capitalism will be illegal by then . . .

*although this oddly tends to prove that government will **** up everything it touches, even a perfectly great idea like a new prison.

[JohnBrowdie]

It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I found it interesting that Hardin is on the crow indian reservation.