Club Med, Guantanamo.

[Washington Post] For up to four hours a day, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, can sit outside in the Caribbean sun and chat through a chain-link fence with the detainee in the neighboring exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mohammed can also use that time to visit a media room to watch movies of his choice, read newspapers and books, or play handheld electronic games. He and other detainees have access to elliptical machines and stationary bikes.

At Guantanamo, such recreational activities interrupt an otherwise bleak existence, according to a Pentagon report of conditions at Camp 7, which houses 16 high-value detainees. But even those privileges may soon vanish.

The Justice Department has begun to hint in court filings that at least some of the defendants in the Sept. 11, 2001, case, as well as other prominent suspects, will be transferred to federal custody in the United States. While lawmakers and activist groups have been consumed with a debate over such a move, little attention has been paid to the conditions that Mohammed and other high-value detainees would face in the United States.

And those conditions, it turns out, would be vastly more draconian than they are at Guantanamo Bay. … Based on what is known about restrictions in the country’s highest-security federal prisons, Mohammed and other terrorism suspects would face profound isolation in the United States.

If sent to a facility such as the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., they would be sealed off for 23 hours a day in cells with four-inch-wide windows and concrete furniture. If they behave, and are allowed an hour’s exercise each day in a tiny yard, they will do so alone. They will have little or no human contact except with prison officials. And the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group with access to Camp 7, will no longer have contact with them.

“Confinement for life,” as one is quoted in the article, or better yet, sentences of death, is admittedly quite appealing for these animals who bomb our cities and turn our planes into missiles. Nonetheless, the sense of justice served might be instead be an enabler for more terrorism.

Critics of Guantanamo Bay have often confused the point of the detainee camp: it’s never been about convictions or justice, but about gathering intelligence necessary to prevent future attacks. That’s the primary rationale for Guantanamo, and why so few of the detainees — albeit all of them deserving such a fate — have been tried and sentenced, whether in civilian court or by military tribunal. And that’s just a defense for starters: it’s not including such unintended and adverse consequences of introducing militant religious fanatics to a population of hardened and angry imprisoned civilians (many of whom will be released one day) with whom to proselytize and convert into the next generation of suicide bombers.

Similarly, critics of the USA Patriot Act have often confused both its intent and its application. That act, most recently defended by former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, simply expanded surveillance abilities, from roving wiretaps to public record searches (i.e., the public library red herring) already in existence for narcotics investigations and organized crime to terrorism. It seems silly to say that Feds should have those powers for local drug dealers or Mafia lords but not for Osama bin Laden. And it seems incompetent to argue their dissolution altogether.

“Mr. [New York-Dallas-Denver bomb suspect Najibullah] Zazi’s arrest is only the most recent case in which intelligence apparently has averted disaster. Cells have been broken up and individual defendants convicted in New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Ohio,” wrote Mukasey.

And yet still liberal Democrats attempt to sunset Patriot Act provisions. The intelligence used to capture Zazi may have well originated from interrogations with Guantanamo Bay detainees, and yet still liberal Democrats attempt to close that facility.

And to what end? Even for those with the best intentions, their sake of justice may undercut the ability to prevent the next 9-11.