President Obama announced this morning that he will immediately send a plan to Congress detailing the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center which has been used to house terrorist suspects since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room at the White House, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, the President said his plan would identify 13 potential sites inside the United States to which detainees could be transferred. It is expected to be met with rejection by the GOP-controlled Congress.
Admitting that the “politics of this are tough,” the President argued that Guantanamo is “contrary to our values,” and he added:
“It’s been clear that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security. It undermines our standing in the world.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reacted to the President’s announcement by commenting:
“President Obama seems to be captured on one matter by one campaign promise he made in 2008.”
On the House side of Capitol Hill, GOP Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry, chairman of House Armed Services Committee, has indicated that his committee would be willing hold a hearing on a closure plan. But he sent a letter to Obama warning that Congress has made clear what details must be included in any plan and that anything less than that would be not be acceptable.
Here’s the President speaking at the White House this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVt9Jb3KYYg
Featured Image Via Wikimedia available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
