Democrats Give Obama Deadline To Submit "Comprehensive Plan" On Closing Guantanamo

Saturday, May 9, 2009
Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Democrats on Thursday took the first step to passing President Barack Obama's supplemental request for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but have given President Barack Obama until Oct. 1 a plan on how to shut down Guantanamo Bay.
The House Appropriations Committee passed the spending bill by voice vote, providing nearly $97 billion for the wars and State Department "stabilization activities," or $12 billion more than what the White House had requested.
No funds for Guantanamo were included, just as committee chairman David Obey (D-WI) had said early this week, but the measure required that Obama provide Congress with a "comprehensive plan" about the closure of the controversial prison by the end of the fiscal year. The administration had asked for $80 million to close the facility.
The prison camp in the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was opened in 2002 and currently has about 240 detainees. It is widely regarded as a symbol of the Bush administration's controversial anti-terror policies, such as the use of waterboarding or simulated drowning.
Obama had signed three executive orders on his second day of office, one closing Guantanamo, another banning waterboarding, and the third ordering a review of options for handling future detainees. Republicans had responded by saying the administration offered little detail about how to shut down the prison and was "gambl[ing] with the nation's security."
The GOP has renewed its criticisms about Guantanamo in recent weeks.
The same day as the committee markup of the supplemental request, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, "Republicans in Congress have expressed serious concerns about the administration's insistence on closing Guantanamo before it has a safe alternative. These concerns are rooted, among other things, in the fact that roughly 10 percent of the detainees who've already been released from Guantanamo have returned to the field of battle."
"These concerns are real ... and yet all we've gotten from the administration on this issue is silence. .. House Democrats agree that providing a blank check to close Guantanamo doesn't make sense," McConnell added.
Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee, released a web video criticizing the President's national security agenda as the administration marked its first 100 days in office. The video said Americans are "growing more worried" about the Obama's plan to "clos[e] a terrorist detention camp with no plan for where to put the terrorists."
The Bush administration had tried to look for ways to shut down Guantamo amid criticisms about its use of harsh interrogation methods on prisoners.Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had asked for assistance from countries with nationals in the prison camp to guarantee that detainees would not "be a danger to society again" once released.