Friday, February 26, 2016

Obama Withholding U.S. Post-Gitmo Sites To Send Message Of Unilateral Executive Action

by JASmius



Because the nature of what the Regime is claiming today precludes Congress even being able to consider his Gitmo-closure plan according the law he himself signed.  Either he's forgotten what was in that law - plausible given how little attention he pays to ANY federal law, much less the Constitution - or he's trying to force Congress into breaking the law as well, and I always thought that O was a "lone wolf":

The Obama administration withheld from Congress the names of ten potential mainland U.S. sites to house detainees now at the Guantanamo Bay prison out of concern that the disclosure would exacerbate political disputes over closing the facility in Cuba.

Bullcrap.  Since he's going to do it by executive decree anyway, what does he care what anybody thinks about it?

The administration said this week that it had compiled a list of thirteen potential replacements for the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, set up to hold [jihadist]s after the September 11th attacks, if lawmakers agreed to shut it. But with the exception of three sites the [Obam]agon already acknowledged inspecting - military bases in South Carolina and Kansas and a federal "supermax" prison in Colorado - the White House refused to identify the locations publicly or in a report sent to Congress.

i.e. It's none of Congress's business as far as the White House is concerned, no matter what the law says.

The decision underscores the difficult political realities associated with closing the prison in Cuba....

i.e. Virtually nobody favors closing Gitmo and aiding the Global Jihad except The One.

....which Barack Obama has long decried as too expensive to maintain....

Horsecrap.  Hell, that's an entire compost heap.

....and a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations.

Let's go with brontosaurus crap for this one.

Congress required Obama to submit a plan to close the prison in a November law, even as most Republicans and many Democrats refuse to consider transferring detainees to the mainland.

"I have pledged to give the president’s plan a fair hearing, but he makes it impossible to do so when he withholds critical details," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican, said in a statement.

i.e. His lawlessness is compulsive.

An administration official said that the report left ten of the alternative facilities unnamed because the administration didn’t want to spark a debate over the merits and shortcomings of any particular location.

i.e. He doesn't want anybody to know where he's infiltrating jihadists so that their future victims will never see them coming.

Instead, the official said, the administration hopes preliminary estimates of how much an alternative mainland prison will cost can spur a dialogue with Congress over closing Guantanamo. Site selection would come later. The official asked not to be identified discussing internal White House deliberations.

i.e. The distraction Obama plans to use while he's clandestinely sneaking jihadists into American towns and communities.

Still seems a little weak, to me.  Why doesn't he just announce that he's closing Gitmo by executive order and relocating all remaining few dozen jihadists - the worst of the worst - into the American civilian prison system and there's nothing Congress or anybody else can do about it?  Yes, yes, he could have done that seven years ago - but why didn't he then?  Re-election concerns?  Okay, but he doesn't have them now, right?  And what could Congress do about it?  Defund DOD?  They can't do that.  Selectively defund the relevant part of DOD?  O would just loot the funds from somewhere else in the Defense budget.  Impeachment?  There'd never be the Senate votes to convict, and Republicans would never do anything that politically explosive in an election year where O is supposedly a lame duck anyway.

Maybe closing Gitmo by cloak & dagger is his idea of a compromise.  Either way, it's being closed.

And there's nothing Congress or anybody else can do about it.

i.e. There goes the neighborhood.....



.....with a delightful dollop of NIMBYism:

Even lawmakers who support shutting the prison are wary of the possibility that detainees could be transferred to prisons in their home districts or States. Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat seeking re-election this year, has said Guantanamo detainees shouldn’t be moved to civilian prisons in his State, including the "supermax" facility in Florence, Colorado, that already houses some convicted terrorists.

Critics of Obama’s plan to move prisoners to the U.S. say they fear a mainland site could become a target for terrorist attacks or mass demonstrations. A 2009 effort to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the September 11th terrorist attacks, from a Guantanamo tribunal to federal court in New York fizzled after opposition from Congress and New York City officials worried about security. A proposal to buy a prison in Illinois for Guantanamo prisoners was abandoned after it produced an uproar in [Obama's adopted] home State.

Reality always differs from the faculty lounge, doesn't it?


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