No More Guantanamo Releases to Be Sought Under Obama, Defense Secretary Says
While the Obama administration won't seek to remove any more detainees from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some are still likely to leave the facility before President Barack Obama's term ends, senior defense officials told NBC News on Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at a news briefing Tuesday that no more requests for detainees to leave the center can occur before Obama leaves office next week. That's because Congress must be notified at least 30 days before any detainees can be transferred, and with Obama leaving office on Jan. 20, that deadline ran out last month. Two senior defense officials told NBC News, however, that Congress was informed of requests to release 15 more detainees before the deadline — meaning they could be freed before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The Defense Department announced this week that four detainees had been transferred from the base to Saudi Arabia, leaving 55 in custody. "It will be up to my successor" what to do with any others, Carter said Tuesday.
Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, Trump's nominee to replace Carter at the Pentagon, has voiced strong opposition to releasing detainees at Guantanamo.
As recently as last month, Trump himself asked Obama to stop releasing detainees, and during the presidential campaign, he even said he'd be "fine" with sending U.S. citizens accused of terrorism to the base.
Obama had sought to close the facility since he took office eight years ago but was unable to overcome sustained logistical, political and congressional obstacles.
Last month, the president cited continued operation of the facility among his objections when he signed a $611 billion military appropriations bill, saying, "It will be judged harshly by history."
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Another campaign promise that was never realistic. How many of those released are back in the terrorism business? And these were radicalized before they were captured.
Not sure where the President thinks these people should be deposited. They are truly enemies of the Republic.
Shining City on the hill my aching ass.
CBS/AP May 8, 2006, 8:20 AM
Bush Says He Wants To Close Guantanamo
President Bush says he would like to close the detention center in Guantanamo in Cuba, but is waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether inmates can face military tribunals.
"Obviously, the Guantanamo issue is a sensitive issue for people," Mr. Bush told ARD German television. "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court.
Fox News Politics -
Published March 19, 2009
Ex-Bush Official: Many at Guantanamo Bay Are Innocent
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.
"There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.
"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."
Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to determine "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."
Out of fear we lock up the innocent, set up illegal courts in our attempt to handle their often false imprisonment, ( Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals ), then celebrate not fixing the problem Bush set up.
Thinking of Gitmo as a good thing is pretty weird. Many might even go so far as to call it Un-American.