“When I first ran for president, it was widely recognized the facility needed to close”, Obama said. There are now 91 detainees housed at the controversial facility in Cuba, 35 of them have already been cleared for release.
Advertisement
The plan will now need to be approved in Congress.
Obama didn’t mention whether he’d play the executive-order card to get his way if the political route doesn’t work, but Congress better make it plain that that course would be vigorously opposed.
Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said the president was putting politics ahead of national security.
He said he was not identifying a specific facility in the plan, which he said would lower detention costs for housing the detainees by $85 million a year.
In his final year in office, President Barack Obama is once again calling for the closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the government has held enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere since the 2001 terrorist attacks. “I believe that we must keep Gitmo open and I will continue to fight the president’s efforts to close this facility and transfer terrorists to USA soil”. “These are detainees who are subject to military commissions, but it also includes those who can not yet be transferred to other countries or who we’ve determined must continue to be detained because they pose a continuing significant threat to the United States”. Obama, noting that his predecessor, President George W. Bush, wanted to close the facility, said that it would result in savings of $300 million over 10 years and $1.7 billion over 20 years.
The U.S. officials say the plan considers 13 different locations in the U.S., including seven existing prison facilities in Colorado, South Carolina and Kansas, as well as six other locations on current military bases.
“If, as a nation, we don’t deal with this now, when will we deal with it? They are going to Guantanamo and we are going to find out everything they know”. Ted Cruz said at a rally in Fernley, Nev.
“If the president proceeds with knowingly breaking the law… he will be met with fierce bipartisan opposition here in Congress and we are taking all legal preparations necessary to meet with that resistance”, Ryan told reporters.
“Why would you close that down and move those people here into the United States?”, Ohio Gov. John Kasich questioned.
It’s unclear what comes next for Obama’s plan.
“I am encouraged to see that the president is sending Congress a plan to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison”, he said in a statement.
Advertisement
The Vermont senator also claimed the prison “has damaged the United States’ moral standing and undermined our foreign policy”.
