{"id":571850,"date":"2010-05-20T13:01:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T17:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=85355"},"modified":"2010-05-20T13:01:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T17:01:04","slug":"house-panel-deals-gitmo-closure-a-major-setback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/571850","title":{"rendered":"House Panel Deals Gitmo Closure a Major Setback"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_83859\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 490px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/gitmo-sunrise.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-83859\" title=\"The sun rises over Guantanamo Bay detention camp\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/gitmo-sunrise-480x319.jpg\" alt=\"The sun rises over Guantanamo Bay detention camp\" width=\"480\" height=\"319\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The sun rises over Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. (MICHELLE SHEPHARD\/TORONTO STAR)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Obama administration&#8217;s longstanding pledge to close the detention  facility at Guantanamo Bay just hit a major obstacle in the House,  creating doubts over whether the detention facility can be closed this  year &#8212; if at all.<\/p>\n<p>Last night the House Armed Services Committee finished this year&#8217;s bill  authorizing $567 billion worth of defense spending and another $159  billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the fiscal year beginning  in October. Following an administration budget plan announced in  February by Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale, the Afghanistan war  request contained a vague provision &#8212; indeed, <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/85076\/tomorrow-big-guantanamo-day-in-congress\">not  even carrying the words &#8220;Guantanamo Bay<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; called a &#8220;transfer  fund&#8221; to authorize the purchase of the Thomson Correction Center in  Illinois. The administration wants to buy Thomson in order to have a  secure facility on U.S. soil to house <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/71031\/thomson-will-be-for-limited-number-of-detainees-awaiting-military-commissions\">those  Guantanamo detainees it designates for military commissions or  indefinite detention without charge<\/a>. Once the federal government  buys Thomson, it can shut down Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_2848\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 140px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2848\" title=\"nationalsecurity\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/nationalsecurity.jpg\" alt=\"Image by: Matt Mahurin\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by: Matt Mahurin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"floatButtons\">\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"\n\tsrc=\"http:\/\/d.yimg.com\/ds\/badge2.js\"\n\tbadgetype=\"square\">\n\t<?php the_permalink(); ?><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\">\n\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\ntweetmeme_source = \"TWI_news\";\ntweetmeme_service = \"bit.ly\";\n<\/script> <script src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"float: left;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p> Or  that was the plan. The actual bill hasn&#8217;t been released yet. But buried  at the bottom of an extensive summary the committee released last night  is an express prohibition on the use of any Defense Department money to  buy a new detention facility. According to the bill summary, the bill  now requires Defense Secretary Robert Gates to give Congress a report  that &#8220;adequately justifies any proposal to build or modify such a  facility&#8221; if it wants to move forward with any post-Guantanamo detention  plan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Committee firmly believes that the construction or  modification of any facility in the U.S. to detain or imprison  individuals currently being held at Guantanamo must be accompanied by a  thorough and comprehensive plan that outlines the merits, costs, and  risks associated with utilizing such a facility,&#8221; the summary text read.  &#8220;No such plan has been presented to date. The bill prohibits the use of  any funds for this purpose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That might place insurmountable  obstacles to the the so-called &#8220;Gitmo North&#8221; plan to transfer Guantanamo  detainees to Thomson. &#8220;They can&#8217;t just create Guantanamo North and move  everyone up there. That&#8217;s clearly barred,&#8221; said Chris Anders, a senior  lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union who monitored  yesterday&#8217;s mark-up. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t mean that the proposal is dead, but  it&#8217;s hard to see how it makes a comeback after the House Armed Services  Committee says there can&#8217;t be money spent on Thomson.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s  not all. While the bill doesn&#8217;t renew the current Congressional ban on  transferring detainees from Guantanamo into the U.S. &#8212; set to expire in  October &#8212; it requires President Obama to submit a &#8220;a comprehensive  disposition plan and risk assessment&#8221; for any future detainee transfer.  Congress would then get &#8220;120 days to review the disposition plan before  it could be carried out.&#8221; Additionally, Congress would get a 30-day  review period for the proposed transfer of any detainee from Guantanamo  to a foreign country in order to check against a detainee inflicting  violence against the U.S. or its interests. The summary instructs Gates  to tell Congress that any such foreign transfer meets &#8220;strict security  criteria to thoroughly vet any foreign country to which a detainee may  be transferred.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The bill, which passed the committee on a vote  of 59 to 0, will go to the House floor and receive a vote most likely  next week. A Senate Armed Services Committee mark-up of the companion  bill in the Senate is scheduled for the end of May.<\/p>\n<p>This is a major  setback for Obama&#8217;s campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay  detention facility. While it&#8217;s theoretically possible for an amendment  authorizing the Thomson purchase to come back into the bill during floor  debate, &#8220;this makes it much, much harder for the administration to move  forward with the closure of Guantanamo, there&#8217;s no doubt about that,&#8221;  said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for  Constitutional Rights. &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to see what reasonable options the  president has without jumping through congressional hoops that are  unreasonable and unnecessary, and it&#8217;s harder to move forward both with  prosecuting those who are terrorist suspects and releasing to freedom  those who are not.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But beyond the closure of the detention  facility itself, the prohibitions now contained in the bill have policy  implications for the dispensation of justice for detainees remaining at  Guantanamo, a burning political issue all through this year. Those  &#8220;abhorrent&#8221; prohibitions, Warren said, &#8220;essentially prohibit the  executive from moving forward with its constitutional and human-rights  obligations to try people [and] creates a paradigm where the operative  default mechanism will be to detain people without trial.&#8221; In April,  Attorney General Eric Holder <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/82199\/just-like-that-graham-and-holder-find-indefinite-detention-consensus\">pledged  to work with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on a new legal architecture for  indefinite detention without charge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anders took a more  optimistic view. If the bill passes, as is likely, the administration  &#8220;will have to work harder and work faster at what they&#8217;ve been doing  effectively for the past 16 or 17 months, which is repatriating and  resettling detainees one by one who have been cleared and then bring  people here for prosecution,&#8221; Anders said, even with the new  congressional repatriation restrictions. This week, one of those  detainees the administration designated for civilian prosecution, Ahmed  Khalfan Ghailani, who has been transfered to a Manhattan prison, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE6496MO20100510?type=domesticNews&amp;feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=domesticNews\">unsuccessfully  urged a federal judge to dismiss his case<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But such an  incremental approach would not allow Obama to close the facility until  the last detainee either leaves or faces criminal charges, a process  likely to take years even without all of the political obstacles that  have emerged around terrorism trials and holding terrorism defendants in  federal corrections facilities. Additionally, it would require Holder  and the Obama administration to abandon a decision that has been much  reviled in the civil libertarian community: <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/82183\/holder-were-still-working-on-indefinite-detention\">designating  48 detainees currently held at Guantanamo for continued indefinite  detention without charge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Closing the detention facility at  Guantanamo Bay was a bipartisan goal before President Obama took office,  with both President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008  Republican presidential nominee, rhetorically committed to shutting down  an international symbol of American lawlessness. But an effective  campaign waged by conservatives to portray the closure as negligent with  national security &#8212; and Obama and the Democrats as weak for seeking it  &#8212; has raised the political stakes for Democratic members of Congress.  Last year, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/30826649\/\">the Senate  voted with 90 votes to prohibit the transfer of detainees from  Guantanamo to the U.S.<\/a>, and this year, the still-unresolved question  of whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the 9\/11 conspirators ought to be  tried in civilian courts or military commissions has become Holder&#8217;s  defining challenge. With Republicans hostile to the Guantanamo closure  plan likely to gain seats in Congress after the November midterm  elections, future attempts at closing the facility are likely to face  even greater political opposition.<\/p>\n<p>Requests for comment to  the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense were not  immediately returned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sun rises over Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. (MICHELLE SHEPHARD\/TORONTO STAR) The Obama administration&#8217;s longstanding pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay just hit a major obstacle in the House, creating doubts over whether the detention facility can be closed this year &#8212; if at all. Last night the House Armed Services [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}