Hillary has NOT been 'silent' on closing GITMO
Last edited Wed Feb 24, 2016, 09:16 AM - Edit history (1)
from FP:
___As a senator in June of 2007 — some five months after she’d already announced her first presidential candidacy — Clinton co-sponsored legislation to require Obama to close Guantanamo and transfer all detainees who couldn’t be moved or tried elsewhere to a military or civilian detention facility in the U.S. for trial or indefinite detention. But just over a month later, she voted for an amendment that stated the U.S. should bar transferring the detainees to American soil, and it passed 94 to 3. Her now rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was one of those three nays (Obama, then an Illinois senator, didn’t vote.).
Still, as secretary of state, she was a staunch advocate for the president’s push to close Guantanamo, and on her way out of his State Department in January of 2013, Clinton sent him a confidential memo, urging him to take more aggressive steps. She didn’t directly advocate for bringing remaining detainees to the U.S. for long-term detention, but did endorse the idea of putting them on trial in the U.S. The existence of the memo was first reported by the Huffington Post, which obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
The Clinton campaign declined FP’s request for comment on whether she currently supports transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. But when asked at a South Carolina town hall last week whether she supports moving them to the state, Clinton said she doesn’t have a response until she sees the details of Obama’s plan.
“The President has to decide what he thinks should be done,” she said, in comments highlighted by the RNC. “He hasn’t yet, so I don’t have a response. I want to see what he’s going to recommend. And I don’t know what he’s going to recommend, so I don’t want to prejudge what he’s going to say.”
Sanders is clear in his position that Guantanamo should be closed, though he has voted against giving Obama funding to do so. In the two years Sanders and Clinton shared in the Senate, they voted together 93 percent of the time, according to a New York Times analysis. Of the 31 times they disagreed, most were on national security and foreign policy, including the 2007 Guantanamo vote.
read: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/17/obamas-plan-to-bring-guantanamo-detainees-to-u-s-could-drop-bombshell-into-2016-race/
Hillary Clinton weighs in today:
“I support President Obama’s plan today to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and finally close the door on this chapter of our history. Over the years, Guantanamo has inspired more terrorists than it has imprisoned. It has not strengthened our national security; it has damaged it,” Clinton said in a statement.
In the statement Clinton goes on to say that she’s supported Guantanamo’s closure since she was a senator and said that she worked on it as secretary of state.
“As President Obama's Secretary of State, I appointed a special envoy and worked with our friends and partners around the world to repatriate or resettle prisoners, with all appropriate monitoring and security,” Clinton said. “Closing Guantanamo would be a sign of strength and resolve. Congress should implement President Obama’s plan as quickly and responsibly as possible."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/bernie-sanders-gitmo-shut-down-clinton-219672
The Baxter Bean ?@TheBaxterBean 7h7 hours ago
Sanders Voted Against Pres Obama And Denied Funding To Close Guantánamo In 2009 #FeelTheBern http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21detain.html …
= new reply since forum marked as read
...engaged in campaign politics.
ABC News Politics @ABCPolitics
@BernieSanders welcomes plan to close Guantanamo: "Others, including my opponent, have not always agreed with me."
