The fact is the inclusion of these provisions in the NDAA is an unfortunate perpetuation of the status quo.
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According to NBC News, the bill also prohibits any funding to build or modify a prison in the United States to house the detainees.
“Our view of those specific provisions have not changed and what the president does believe, though, is there are a number of provisions in the NDAA that are important to running and protecting the country”.
“The fact is the inclusion of these provisions in the NDAA is an unfortunate perpetuation of the status quo”, Mr Earnest said.
Forty-one county sheriffs, including 12 from the Western Slope, sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him not to transfer military detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Colorado prisons.
“A Pentagon report expected as early as this week identifies prisons in Colorado, Kansas and SC where Guantanamo detainees could possibly be housed”, reported the AP.
The bill does, however, contain the Guantanamo language Obama said he objected to when he vetoed the last bill.
The legislation, which passed the House by a 370-58 vote last week, includes restrictions on transferring detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, adding roadblocks to a long-standing campaign pledge from Obama to close the facility.
The Obama administration aims to transfer eligible detainees to foreign countries, prosecute those who can be prosecuted, and move to USA soil suspects who cannot be prosecuted but are deemed too unsafe to release, an option now, thankfully, barred by law. If it decides, however unwisely, to bar “the use of funds provided to any department or agency… for the transfer or release of individuals” detained at Guantanamo to or within the USA, then Obama should abide by the prohibition rather than resort to a clever legal rationale that claims he can act on his own.
Obama and the Pentagon are expected to submit a plan to close Guantanamo Bay this week. But he said beyond an initial meeting with Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Lisa Monaco, a top national security official in the White House, the effort never went anywhere. She said within the first 30 days of taking office she would convene the defense secretary and VA secretary for regular meetings and there would be “zero tolerance” for abuses and delays within the system.
“But they won the vote in Congress, and you’re saying the president is not bound by it?”
Authorize the president’s request of $715 million to help Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group. “I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority”, he said.
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Although the prisons are capable of securing the detainees, the action would attract “sympathizers who would mount an attack … or commit other acts of terror”, the lawmen wrote. “But I definitely would not, as I talked about final week, take that choice off the desk”. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in the Senate – voted in favor of the new defense bill.
