As expected, Republicans have come out and trashed the Obama administration’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay and transfer detainees to a US facility. Over the last seven years, I’ve certainly criticized Obama on his failures in ending the Bush-Cheney-era abuses, including his inability to find a way to close the Guantanamo facility, more than on any other issue. With a third cleared for transfers to other countries, 56 would be moved to the continental USA, including accused 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
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The plan will now need to be approved in Congress.
Jerica Arents, an organizer with Witness Against Torture and an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University, said the president’s plan is much the same as the one he offered in 2009 after assuming office and that it offered no timeline to free the 91 detainees still being held.
“I don’t want to pass this problem on the next president, whoever it is”.
Welcome to the insanity that is the never-ending American gulag at Guantanamo Bay. In the course of renewing ties, Cuban leaders have repeatedly demanded the United States return the base at Guantanamo Bay to Cuba.
The plan, which was requested by Congress, makes a financial argument for closing the controversial detention center.
Republicans and some Democrats in Congress largely oppose proposals to move any of the prisoners to the United States.
“The Obama Administration thinks enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay deemed too risky for release to foreign countries should be brought to the U.S.”, Goodlatte said in a statement.
In releasing his plan at the White House Feb. 23, Obama said keeping the center open runs contrary to American values, undermines USA status around the world and “is counterproductive to our fight against terrorists because they use it as propaganda in their efforts to recruit”.
In the Senate, Armed Services Chairman John McCain dismissed the plan as incomplete and said GOP senators would join their House counterparts on any legal challenge.
“Let us go ahead and close this chapter”, Obama said at the White House. It increases the frequency of hearings to review detainees for possible transfer and recommends changes to the military commissions process for those who are not eligible for release.
“The president himself has considered this question”, Earnest told reporters.
The attorneys general for Kansas, Colorado and SC wrote in a joint letter to Obama in November that moving detainees to their states would amount to a “dangerous and illegal action that would violate federal law and harm our States”. It says that “the Department of Defense identified 13 potential facilities for the objective of building a cost estimate”, but it does not specify any legal authority for actually transferring detainees from Guantanamo to one of those facilities.
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In spite of his urgency, Obama was vague about the political path to close the prison and didn’t specify where the terrorists in the facility would be transferred to US soil.
