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View Full Version : Obama releases 10 more Gitmo prisoners, this time to Oman




Zippyjuan
01-17-2017, 05:29 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/17/obama-releases-10-more-gitmo-prisoners-time-oman/96688414/

Possibly more to be released later this week. Nine more have already been cleared for release. It costs $450 million a year to keep it open (which with 45 left would be $10 million an inmate). http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/cost-guantanamo


Total Guantanamo Bay Prison Facility Costs

Cost of Guantanamo prison facility up to the end of 2015: $5.687 billion
Cost for 2015: $445 million
Not included in above costs:
Cost of camp headquarters, built in 2004: $13.5 million
Cost of Camp 7 (for “high-value” detainees): Classified
Cost of Justice Department, FBI, and CIA involvement in detention operations: Unknown


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Tuesday it has transferred 10 more detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the nation of Oman, but conceded that the action fell far short of fulfilling President Obama's promise to close the military prison on the island of Cuba by the end of his term.

"At this time, I don't anticipate that we will succeed in that goal of closing the prison," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. "But it's not for a lack of trying, I assure you."

The Defense Department said that agencies within the Guantanamo Review Task Force signed off on the releases, determining that the prisoners no longer represent a threat.

Continued detention "does not remain necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States," the announcement said.

The releases pare down the Gitmo prison population to 45 as Obama prepares to leave office on Friday ahead of President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he plans to keep the facility open and even add to it.

When Obama took office, there 242 prisoners at Gitmo, but most have been moved out for repatriation, resettlement or prosecution, Earnest said.

The releases appear to be somewhat defiant of Trump's wishes.

Trump, who during the 2016 campaign pledged to put some "bad dudes" at Guantanamo Bay, tweeted this month: "There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield."



https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-admits-obama-wont-close-guantanamo-195448317.html


White House admits Obama won’t close Guantánamo

President Obama will fail to keep one of his most high-profile promises — closing the detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the White House acknowledged on Tuesday.

“At this point, I don’t anticipate that we will succeed in that goal of closing the prison, but it’s not for a lack of trying,” press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his final media briefing.

“The only reason it didn’t happen is because of the politics that members of Congress of both parties, frankly, played with this issue,” Earnest said with just two full days left in Obama’s term.

The outgoing president had made a top priority of closing the facility, opened under his predecessor in 2002, at the dawn of the modern war on terrorism. Obama contended that it served as a terrorism-recruiting tool and later seized on the argument that keeping the facility open for a diminished population of prisoners was a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend — because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America,” Obama told a joint meeting of Congress in February 2009. “That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists — because living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.”

But lawmakers blocked his proposals to shift the prisoners to prison facilities on U.S. soil and have criticized his efforts to transfer detainees overseas to countries willing to harbor them under close supervision.

In the latest transfer, 10 prisoners were shipped to Oman for what that country called a “temporary” stay. Just 45 detainees remain at the naval base, down from 242 when Obama took office.

Ironically, it was a liberal Democrat who dealt the first blow to Obama’s promise.

In May 2009, Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey stripped $80 million that Obama had requested to close the prison from an emergency funding bill. “While I don’t mind defending a concrete program, I’m not much interested in wasting my energy defending a theoretical program,” Obey said at the time. “So when they have a plan, they’re welcome to come back and talk to us about it.“

Republican hardliners (with not just a few Democrats going along) seized on the issue to try to make Obama look weak on national security. The Obama administration provided all the ammo Republicans needed with its clumsy and ill-fated plan to transfer a handful of forlorn Chinese Uighur prisoners to a Northern Virginia suburb, touching off a full-blown NIMBY (not in my backyard) rebellion in Congress.

The Obama team members seriously underestimated how difficult a task they had assigned to themselves. “There was kind of this naiveté that somehow, if the president said we’re going to close Guantánamo, and we have a plan to close Guantánamo, that ultimately that would happen,” recalled former CIA Director Leon Panetta.

NorthCarolinaLiberty
02-12-2017, 10:58 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/17/obama-releases-10-more-gitmo-prisoners-time-oman/96688414/






President Obama will fail to keep one of his most high-profile promises — closing the detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the White House acknowledged on Tuesday.

Well, that's a shame.

And I noticed you put "supporting member" in your avatar. That's a new one, huh?




Zippyjuan
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