What if Obama could do Gitmo all over again?
He’d close Gitmo on day 1, of course
At a speech to the City Club of Cleveland yesterday afternoon, President Obama summoned once again the hobgoblin of his presidency: Guantanamo Bay.
During a Q&A session the President revealed that, if he could start his presidency over, with perfect hindsight, he would close Gitmo on day one.
Who does he blame for this error in judgment? The bipartisan coalition to close the facility, of course!
“I thought we had enough consensus there that we could do it in a more deliberate fashion,” Obama added. “But the politics of it got tough, and people got scared by the rhetoric around it. Once that set in, then the path of least resistance was just to leave it open, even though it’s not who we are as a country and it’s used by terrorists around the world to help recruit jihadists.”
Instead, Obama said, we’ve been forced to “chip away it” a little bit at a time, releasing a small number of detainees who could not be charged but leaving more than 100 still in captivity with no trials in sight.
Watch:
Late last year, a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the President was still considering two main avenues to fulfill his yet-undelivered campaign promise:
Senior administration officials are saying that the President is serious about coming through on the Gitmo closure, and is considering taking executive action to get the job done. The Wall Street Journal’s report reveals Obama’s two most likely routes to bypass Congress:
He could veto the annual bill setting military policy, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, in which the ban on transferring detainees to the U.S. is written. While the veto wouldn’t directly affect military funding, such a high-stakes confrontation with Congress carries significant political risks.
A second option would be for Mr. Obama to sign the bill while declaring restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners an infringement of his powers as commander in chief, as he has done previously. Presidents of both parties have used such signing statements to clarify their understanding of legislative measures or put Congress on notice that they wouldn’t comply with provisions they consider infringements of executive power.
Similar efforts are likely on immigration, “climate change” and other areas where Obama is unable to obtain congressional approval.
Another day, another effort to bypass Congress on behalf of a radical agenda that the American people wouldn’t and still don’t stand behind.
The scary part? He said this knowing that a good percentage of prisoners released from the facility return to the battlefield.
What a Commander in Chief we have.
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Comments
I like the Cotton Plan.
“Let them rot in hell”.
Treat them to a military tribunal, and then keep them there until there is no Islamic jihad if they are considered dangerous.
Oh, and Collectivists… I want some metrics on “GITMO as terrorist recruitment device”. Showing the NET effects.
Heh…!
How many times, for how many different topics, has this jerk said, “..it’s not who we are as a country”?
I remember the signing ceremony in which he paused to ask WH Counsel, Greg Craig: “Is there a separate Executive Order…with respect to how we’re going to dispose of the detainees?”
Yep. Firm hand on the tiller.
I propose another prisoner swap. Send Obama to Gitmo in exchange for all the prisoners who are there. Prisoners would be sent to live in Kenya. And since no one is leading the country any way, the White House could remain empty until 2016.
I wish Obama would check in.
He doesn’t mean it.
President Obama’s own plan for “closing” Gitmo was to move the detainees to an Illinois prison. There would be *no* additional trials, other than for those who were going to get them in Gitmo anyway. (No, I’m not kidding; that was Obama’s actual plan.)
The detainees have had law-of-war tribunals under the Bush administration since 2004, and annual reviews since the beginning. That is who we are as a country.
What is stopping him today from doing what he said he wanted to do on Day 1?