US President Barack Obama listens a question during a meeting with the US Governors Association at the White House in Washington February 22, 2016. Republican speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan claimed that Obama has to persuade the Americans that moving the terrorists from Guantanamo to the U.S.is a smart or safe move.
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“Responsibly closing the detention facility at GITMO and transferring detainees won’t be easy, but it is the right thing to do”, said Sen. Obama noted that during his presidency, closing the facility increasingly became a partisan issue. The report concludes that the USA could save as much as $85 million a year by moving the detainees to the U.S.
Even before Obama addressed reporters and the nation from the White House, one GOP presidential candidate, Sen.
Obama acknowledged that the closure plan, which he campaigned on in 2008 and vowed to do in an executive order in January 2009 two days after taking office, would face stiff opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress, but he asked lawmakers to consider it.
Congressman Joe Wilson (R-2nd District) says, “The president’s unsafe proposal to close Guantanamo and transfer terrorists to locations in the United States, potentially SC, is unlawful”.
That appears to be a reference to a 2007 non-binding “sense of the Senate” measure stating that Guantanamo Bay detainees “should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods”.
Describing the jail as a stain on America’s reputation and a catalyst for jihadists, Obama said “I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president”.
Bernie Sanders attacked Hillary Clinton’s record on the detention center at Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday, just after President Barack Obama delivered his blueprint for the controversial military prison’s closure.
Congress has banned such transfers to the United States since 2011.
The plan says a U.S. facility would save money over time.
Convicted terrorists are already held in the Florence prison, including Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in civilian court for the September 11, 2011, attacks; Faisal Shahzad, who tried to blow up a vehicle bomb in New York’s Times Square in 2010; and Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.
The congressman representing Northwest Missouri also took a dim view of the Obama plan. The President’s plan will force the United States Military to make the impossible decision of following their Commander in Chief or following the law.
“Congress has waited for seven and a half years for President Obama to provide a plan to achieve his goal of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. I think the burden is on the president to come up with a credible plan and I think over the next few weeks we’ll see whether he’s done so”.
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“You’re going to have men who have been held for 15 years without charge finally getting on a plane to leave Guantanamo, but instead of returning to their loved ones, or to their homes, they’re going to be sent to a maximum security prison in the United States where they will continue to be held indefinitely without charge”, Shakir points out.
