President Barack Obama forcefully defended his plans to close the Guantanamo detention camp Thursday and said some of the terror suspects held there would be brought to top-security prisons in the United States despite fierce opposition in Congress.
He spoke one day after the Senate voted resoundingly to deny him money to close the prison, and he decried "fear-mongering" that he said had led to such opposition.
He insisted the transfer would not endanger Americans and promised to work with lawmakers to develop a system for holding detainees who can't be tried and can't be turned loose from the Navy-run prison in Cuba.
"There are no neat or easy answers here," Obama said in a speech in which he pledged anew to clean up what he said was "quite simply a mess" at Guantanamo that he had inherited from the Bush administration.
The whining by our president is getting tiresome. Given the number of Bush-era security policies that President Obama has wisely continued, you'd think a little humility would be in order on judging yet another Bush-era policy.
Quite simply a mess? Funny, that's not what his attorney general said:
Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he's still going to do it.
As for fear mongering, since we will be holding many of the little darlings even after the president closes Guantanamo Bay, perhaps the record of those we've released might warrant--not fear--but caution. But the president doesn't want us to see that report on the number of detainees who have returned to the fight.
The president also advised that our prisons would be tough enough to hold the jihadis from Guantanamo Bay. And that is why the global Left will only pause to take a deep breath after Gitmo is closed in order to continue screaming about whatever prison we use to hold the jihadis.
If even a "well-run, professional facility" that has already let go scores of jihadis who continue to wage war on us can attract Leftist rage, does anybody with a functioning brain stem really believe the Hope and Change Detention Facility will be viewed as anything but President Obama's very own gulag?
Closing the Cuba facility is seen by our president as a neat and easy answer to the problem of responding to unhinged criticism of Guantanamo Bay. He is mistaken.
