From the Cafferty File:
President Obama is facing resistance from his own party when it comes to plans to close down the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. Senate Democrats say they won’t provide the $80 million requested to shut down the facility until the administration comes up with a plan for transferring the detainees.
That money will be stripped from a supplemental war bill and instead replaced with language that says no money can be used to transfer detainees from Gitmo to the U.S. — and no additional money will be approved until 60 days after Mr. Obama submits his plan to Congress.
This is similar language to what’s in the House bill, and it’s a big blow to the president, who right after he took office, announced he would close the base by next January.
You can bet politics is behind all this.The Republicans have been hammering away that it would be a reckless move to shut the prison down before deciding what to do with the terror suspects. They’ve released statements saying things like: “Meet your new neighbor, Khalid Sheik Mohammad?” And House Republicans introduced a bill called the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act.
Meanwhile the Pentagon says there’s nothing to indicate that the deadline to close Gitmo by January is at all in jeopardy; and just today a top Pentagon official said members of Congress have to rethink their opposition to allowing detainees into the U.S. She says closing the prison in Cuba will mean hard choices for everyone.
Here’s my question to you: What does it mean that the president’s own party won’t give him the money to close the Guantanamo Bay prison?
Lou writes:
Because mid-term elections are next year and none of the cowards can get re-elected with Republicans telling voters their representatives are going to move these detainees to jails in their states. We don’t have a government for the people any more. We have a government for the upcoming election.
Bob from Argentina writes:
You have to have a plan. Plain and simple. It is complete stupidity to close a “confinement facility” of any kind without a plan for those you have confined there — unless you just don’t care. If you don’t care, then move them next door to those who suggested all of this.
Matt writes:
Rule #1: Do and say anything to get elected.
Rule #2: Ignore what you did and said before you got elected.
Rule #3: Now that we know what we know, we can’t do what we said we would do.
Michael writes:
It means people are starting to have doubts that everything will fall into place. I honestly believe this can work so I wish that Obama’s party would give him the support he deserves. If any president needed support right now, it’s Obama. He was thrown into a garbage pile of bad decisions that must be corrected
Steve writes:
They are terrified that they will end up in their districts. John Boehner says they have cleared out whole wings of prisons for 4 convicted terrorists. Why? Let them stay together and recruit each other. Where in the hell are they going anyway?
Roger from Palm Desert, California writes:
Jack, What it means is that the Democratic Party needs some guts. We’ve kept the Unabomber, John Wayne Gacy, Charlie Manson and others of their ilk off the streets. If there’s one thing we do know how to do, it’s how to imprison people. Shut Gitmo down and deprive al Qaeda one of its best recruitment tools.
