Obama Rebuffed On Detainees
Democrats in Congress dealt President Barack Obama a rare defeat today when they voted overwhelmingly against closing the terrorist detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Well, that’s not exactly what they voted for.
Technically, the U.S. Senate followed the lead of the House and voted to delete an $80 million appropriation that would have provided funding for closing the camp.
The margin?
90-6, people.
Never mind that closing something should actually save money (not cost money), the real reason for the lopsided vote is that Obama did not come up with a good enough plan for what would happen next to the detainees.
“Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said at a press conference today.
Blah, blah, blah.
Of course, it is nice to see “The One” briefly dip under the water he’s been walking on in Washington these past 100 days.
Obama asked for the $80 million as part of a $91 billion war resolution. Now it appears his promise to close the Guantanamo base by January 2010 is in some dire straits.
From where we sit, paying for bullets to mow down all these terrorists wouldn’t seem to be particularly expensive.
In fact, the only reason to keep them alive at all would be to dunk them underwater until they tell us where their terrorist buddies are.
And since we’re not dunking people anymore …
Comments
By cerius on May 20th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
We all know that keeping them in Cuba saves millions of dollars anually. It makes a lot of financial sense to keep ‘em there as the infrastructure is well-established and it will save a lot of money.
However, Obama is vindictive so I expect a majority of the detainees will be sent to the Navy Brig in Charleston–to punish SC for voting for McCain.
By Mike on May 20th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
This is just another example of a pie-in-the-sky, feel good, no substance candidate making a promise his a$$ couldn’t cash once he arrived in DC and got briefed by the grown-ups. Gitmo is the PERFECT solution to the problem of where to house these animals, and now that Sen. Jim Webb (who is about the only Democrat left with any semblance of national defense cred) is on board with keeping Gitmo alive some of the lefties are even coming around.
I always said that Gitmo had simply become a lightning rod for all of the wildly irrational W-hating so prevalent in the past four years. Now that their whipping boy is gone and they’ve had to answer the obvious question of, “if not there, where?” just watch- Gitmo will be transformed (read, “spun”) into a wholly different context…