Wandtv.com, NewsCenter17, StormCenter17, Central Illinois News-Kirk seeks 'dispassionate and specific' discussion of prison's future
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Associated Press - November 30, 2009 8:54 AM ET
CHICAGO (AP) - What a difference a week makes.
Republican Congressman Mark Kirk now says he wants a "dispassionate and specific" discussion about the possibility of selling an Illinois prison to the federal government to house Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Make no mistake, Kirk still thinks it's an "unnecessary risk" to bring detainees to the nearly vacant Thomson Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois.
But now he's focused his concerns on how trials would happen for the detainees and how their medical care would be handled.
Kirk had previously said bringing detainees to Illinois would make the state and the city of Chicago "ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization."
Kirk is running for President Barack Obama's old Senate seat.
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