A Pentagon report anticipated as early as this week identifies prisons in Colorado, Kansas and SC the place Guantanamo detainees might probably be housed so the army jail in Cuba might be shut down.
Advertisement
The Defense Department is expected to present a plan this week for closing the prison, which may include a list of alternative detention sites in the continental United States.
The House passed the NDAA by 370-58.
“One of our key recommendations is to end indefinite detention everywhere, so we wouldn’t want detainees to be transferred somewhere else from Guantanamo where they still face indefinite detention without trial”. “The president, in his capacity as commander in chief, has the exclusive authority to make tactical military decisions”.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters Monday that Obama was essentially planning to “bring the world’s worst terrorists to a prison near you”. “The answer is an emphatic no”.
“I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority to accomplish this goal”, Earnest said. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) “So you know, what you can build, you can take apart too, it seems to me”.
“We have long expressed our disappointment at the repeated effort by Congress to impede the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay”, the spokesman said. When Obama vetoed the last defense appropriations bill, he noted his opposition to the Guantanamo language as a reason for nixing it. Senator John McCain, who supports closing Guantanamo, says he doesn’t think Obama will veto this bill over the detention facility.
The Senate voted 91-3 to pass overwhelmingly the sweeping defence bill, and the White House said Mr Obama was likely to sign it, despite the Guantanamo Bay provisions. The only clear cut motivation on the part of members of Congress right now, when it comes to this issue, is their own personal politics. The president has in past years threatened to veto the NDAA over such restrictions but eventually signed off on each on the bills.
That margin, like the vote in the Senate, far exceeds the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.
When asked on Tuesday about a possible executive order, Earnest said the White House’s focus now is on getting Congress to consider its plan.
But acknowledging that the NDAA sets policy into 2017, Earnest said the president wouldn’t be satisfied leaving office having simply scheduled Guantanamo for shutdown. “The president feels strongly about that”.
Advertisement
The Pentagon would be banned from transferring enemy combatants to the US and the detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba would have to stay open under a $615 billion defense policy bill that won final passage. “The president is not the only person that shares that view”, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, citing former secretaries of state who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
