Democrats Will Not Fund Bid to Close Gitmo
Hooray! Some Democrats are coming to their senses!
House Democratic leaders Monday dropped President Obama’s request for $81 million to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, bowing to strong Republican criticism that the administration lacks a plan to relocate terror suspects detained there.
I recall that 81 Million request – funny how it was named as something else so it would be passed but after its passage would be used for something entirely different. Is that the transparency Obama promised the people?
Mr. Obama requested the money as part a spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Democratic appropriators left it out of the bill circulated Monday among House Appropriations Committee staffers.
Republicans have been criticizing Mr. Obama for rushing to keep his campaign promise to close the prison camp at the U.S. Navy base on Cuba without a plan for what to do with the roughly 240 terrorism suspects currently held on the island.
One would think that a plan and a model of some sorts would be important when dealing with something as delicate as convicted terrorists.
Closing the prison “just never stood up to logic. There is no place on the planet to take the worst of the worst that would treat them as well as they are treated at [Guantanamo],” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, who visited the facility a month ago.
“The bottom line really is that [if the prisoners are released], innocent people will die and some of them likely will be Americans,” he said.
But why would Democrats care about their own citizens? They sympathize more with the terrorists than the Americans who would inevitably be affected by the Gitmo close and the release of these people onto our own soil and in their own backyard. If someone who voted for Obama wants to take these guys in, then so be it – I think they should.
Democratic leaders were not immediately available to comment.
What’s new?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, previously dismissed the Republicans’ objections as another example of partisan obstructionism by the minority.
“It would be highly irresponsible for Republicans to attempt to hold up funding as part of their just-say-no strategy,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said.
Leave it to Senator Dingy Harry Reid, who has rocks for brains to try to make this something ideological and politically based. It honestly is in the best interest of the nation to keep that prison open or to at least have a real strategic to go forward with the plan.
Senate Democrats have not come out in support of using the war-spending bill to close the prison camp, a strong signal that the move by House appropriators could kill the funding in the bill.
Good! I’ve been wondering where some of those moderate democrats went to!
