Obama On Closing Gitmo: ‘I’m Going To Go Back At This’

[ProSense]

Obama On Closing Gitmo: ‘I’m Going To Go Back At This’

President Obama on Tuesday pledged to renew efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, asserting that the detention facility "needs to be closed."

"I'm going to go back at this," Obama said at a White House press conference, according to a rush transcript. "I've asked my team to review everything that's being done in Guantanamo, everything we can do administratively and I'm going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that's in the best interest of the American people."

Obama added that the current system at Guantanamo is unsustainable. "The notion we're going to keep over a hundred individuals in a no-man's land indefinitely, even at a time when we have wound down the war in Iraq, we are winding down the war in Afghanistan, we have kept the pressure on these transnational terrorist networks, when we have transferred detention authorities to Afghanistan. The idea we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have been not been tried, that is contrary to who we are and our interests and it needs to stop."

A hunger strike has gripped Guantanamo in recent weeks, leading to clashes with guards. According to The Guardian, 100 detainees are on hunger strike. Twenty-one of those inmates are being force-fed. "I don't these individuals to die," Obama said of the hunger strike there.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obama-on-closing-gitmo-im-going-to-go

[Demeter]

1. I'll believe it when I see it (and not one minute before)

Sequester Gitmo, cowards! Nobody wants to waste another dime torturing innocents.

[JaneyVee]

2. I can see how an original vote of 96-4 to keep it open would be discouraging.

[bowens43]

3. LOL! Sure you are...does he think we're morons or something?

[Whisp]

4. . . .

[hughee99]

5. Gitmo is easy to close, once you figure out what you're going to do with

a bunch of people you have neither charged and prosecuted, nor cleared and allowed to go free. Even if they are cleared, where would you send them to if their own country of origin doesn't want them back?

It seems to me that talk of "Closing Gitmo" is really just tap-dancing around this issue.

[morningfog]

6. That means very little as long as he maintains

that he has the power to detain indefinitely without charge.

[ProSense]

7. Actually,

"That means very little as long as he maintains that he has the power to detain indefinitely without charge."

...he doesn't. From the OP

Obama added that the current system at Guantanamo is unsustainable. "The notion we're going to keep over a hundred individuals in a no-man's land indefinitely, even at a time when we have wound down the war in Iraq, we are winding down the war in Afghanistan, we have kept the pressure on these transnational terrorist networks, when we have transferred detention authorities to Afghanistan. The idea we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have been not been tried, that is contrary to who we are and our interests and it needs to stop."

This was also in his statement of purpose to Congress.

[morningfog]

8. His administration has exerted that right.

It has zero to do with gitmo being open or shut. 48 people have not and cannot be charged, yet the Obama administration claims the right to hold them.

[ProSense]

9. You are

"His administration has exerted that right."

...contradicting his statements. Can you point to where the administration claimed that right?

[morningfog]

10. His statements contradict his policy.

• 48 detainees were determined to be too dangerous to transfer but not feasible
for prosecution. They will remain in detention pursuant to the government’s
authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by
Congress in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Detainees may
challenge the legality of their detention in federal court and will periodically
receive further review within the Executive Branch.

http://www.justice.gov/ag/guantanamo-review-final-report.pdf

He claims the right to hold them under the AUMF, indefinitely.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. Until he and Congress can figure out what to do with them

I don't think he has any other choice. Bush started this and President Obama is now stuck with having to figure out how to clean up that mess. Bush and Cheney-purposely or otherwise- muddied the waters the instant that they opened up Gitmo and began claiming the right to indefinitely hold people, as well as subject them to "enhanced interrogation" (aka torture), which really created this clusterf**k. IMHO the right thing to do is to develop a system to try the remaining detainees and get it done, so that we can separate out the ones whom are terrorists and need to be held for a determinate amount of time and those whom weren't guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place or wrong time and/or people rounded up wrongly for other reasons. I have confidence that President Obama wants to do the right thing but he needs cooperation from Congress and even some in his own party to get it done and I think that that's where we really need to apply the pressure IMHO.

[hughee99]

12. If the solution is to either give them a trial or release them,

I'm not sure how Congress would have any say in that. What they have done is attempt to block funds to relocate this camp elsewhere, but even if they were to allow this, it's not a resolution to the issue.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

13. I thought that they were blocking funds to re-locate the prisoners anywhere other than Gitmo

At any rate, until Congress authorizes federal funds to move the prisoners, they're effectively not going anywhere- whether or not they are innocent or guilty it would seem. From what I've heard they're also running into lots of logistic and legal problems with these military tribunals, which just goes back to my original point that Bush/Cheney made a legal mess the second they started treating terroism as a military problem rather than a law enforcement matter, which now lots of people seem to have bought into as the "correct" way to handle terrorists. I don't think that President Obama is sold on the idea and genuinely wants to do things differently but it seems like his hands get tied by Psycho-Congress at every turn. Until or unless Congress gets as interested in addressing the problem of Gitmo as they are about ensuring that nobody gets inconvenienced at the airports, I'm not sure much is going to change- but I don't really blame President Obama for having lofty ideals but being straightjacketed into perpetuating the status quo.

[hughee99]

14. If I understand correctly, they're blocking funds to relocate the entire prison.

The "logistical and legal" problem they have is that they believe the people they have in custody are very bad people and the know they don't have the evidence to convict them (or that they'll have to compromise classified agents to do it). The * admin definitely made a mess, and now Obama has the choice between holding people without charging them or releasing what are believed to be bad people which could have serious repercussions down the road.

The government has already tried and convicted a number of people that had spent time there, and has release (either without a trial or after trying them) a number of other people. It's not congress that's the problem here, it's that the administration is in a lose-lose situation.