Military veteran Pete Hegseth says the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the U.S. military prison camp holding extremely dangerous people, should not be closed.

Hegseth, a native of Minnesota, has been on the inside at Guantanamo Bay, often referred to as Guantanamo or Gitmo. While in the military he served in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was a guard at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and 2005.

“There were 700 detainees there then. Today there are roughly 60,” Hegseth told a group in Minot at a question-and-answer session at the Sleep Inn Conference Center, Sept. 19.

“I went back to Fox News channel about eight months ago to see the prison today,” he said. Hegseth is a Fox News contributor and author of the new book “In The Arena,” a book using Teddy Roosevelt’s famous “Man In The Arena” speech to reinvigorate America.

“Anyone who has seen it knows that we bend over backwards as Americans to provide for the welfare of these radical Islamic terrorists,” Hegstad said, describing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

“The disease they suffer from the most in Guantanamo Bay is diabetes because they are fed so well. They get world-class health care, 300 channels of satellite television, wireless headphones, recreational time, he said, adding, “These guys are very well taken care of.”

“You talk to prison officials Guantanamo Bay is as good as or better than any prisons we have here in the United States. It’s secure and the guards there do a fantastic job,” he said.

“The left perpetuates this myth that Guantanamo Bay is some sort of gulag, a sin, a propaganda sting on America. All you need to do is just go see it and then defend it. The last time al-Qaeda used it as a propaganda tool was like 10 years ago. They just wanted to use it against us, they were using anything against us,” he said.

Hegseth said if the U.S. closes the Guantanamo Bay prison camp today the only group that gets a propaganda win is ISIS and al-Qaeda “that looks at us and says we got the Americans, we duped the Americans into closing their prison and now they’ve got to house those folks.” He said those prisons will either have to be let go, put somewhere else or housed in the United States.

“If we are at war with radical Islam, with Islamism, then there’s no better place to house and interrogate those folks than Guantanamo Bay, and we shouldn’t be scared of that fact and those who have seen that understand that,” Hegstad said.

He went on, “The problem is we’ve got a president who doesn’t believe we are at war and is hell-bent no matter what to keep a campaign promise. I hope Congress can do enough to prevent him from doing that so that too is at the disposal of the future commander in chief.”

“He doesn’t just want to, by the way, close Guantanamo Bay, the prison. He wants to give away Guantanamo Bay. He sees that as a relevent of colonialism back in the Teddy Roosevelt days and he’s not done apologizing to the world,” Hegstad said.

Hegseth also spoke to the North Dakota Petroleum Council’s annual meeting held in Minot.