• pub­lished: 01 May 2013
• views: 37757

It's not sus­tain­able," Mr. Obama said at a White House news con­fer­ence. "The no­tion that we're going to keep 100 in­di­vid­u­als in no man's land in per­pe­tu­ity," he added, makes no sense. "All of us should re­flect on why ex­act­ly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?" De­scrib­ing the prison in Cuba as a waste of tax­pay­er money that has had a dam­ag­ing ef­fect on Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, Mr. Obama said he would try again to per­suade Congress to lift re­stric­tions on trans­fer­ring in­mates. He also said he had or­dered a re­view of "ev­ery­thing that we can do ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly." But there is no in­di­ca­tion that Mr. Obama's pro­pos­al to close the prison, as he vowed to do upon tak­ing of­fice in 2009 after crit­i­ciz­ing it dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, has be­come any more pop­u­lar. Mr. Obama re­marked that "it's a hard case to make" be­cause "it's easy to dem­a­gogue the issue." The plan for Guantánamo he pro­posed — mov­ing any re­main­ing pris­on­ers to a Su­per­max-style prison in Illi­nois — was blocked by Congress, which barred any fur­ther trans­fers of de­tainees onto do­mes­tic soil. A spokesman for Sen­a­tor Mitch Mc­Connell of Ken­tucky, the Re­pub­li­can lead­er and one of the lead­ing op­po­nents of clos­ing the prison, said on Tues­day that "there is wide, bi­par­ti­san op­po­si­tion in Congress to the pres­i­dent's goal of mov­ing those ter­ror­ists to Amer­i­can cities and towns." Mr. Obama made his re­marks fol­low­ing the ar­rival at the prison of more than three dozen Navy nurs­es, corps­men and spe­cial­ists to help deal with a mass hunger strike by in­mates, many of whom have been held for over 11 years with­out trial. As of Tues­day, 100 of the 166 pris­on­ers were of­fi­cial­ly deemed to be par­tic­i­pat­ing, with 21 now being force-fed a nu­tri­tion­al sup­ple­ment through tubes in­sert­ed in their noses. "I don't want these in­di­vid­u­als to die," Mr. Obama said. Both con­ser­va­tives and civil lib­er­tar­i­ans said that under ex­ist­ing law, Mr. Obama could be doing more to re­duce the num­ber of low-lev­el de­tainees held at the prison. The chair­man of the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Howard P. McK­eon, Re­pub­li­can of Cal­i­for­nia, noted that the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion had never ex­er­cised the power it has had since in 2012 to waive, on a case-by-case basis, most of the re­stric­tions law­mak­ers have im­posed on trans­fer­ring de­tainees to coun­tries with trou­bled se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions. "For the past two years, our com­mit­tee has worked with our Sen­ate coun­ter­parts to en­sure that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions nec­es­sary to trans­fer de­tainees over­seas are rea­son­able," Mr. McK­eon said. "The ad­min­is­tra­tion has never cer­ti­fied a sin­gle trans­fer." Human rights groups also urged Mr. Obama to di­rect the Pen­tagon to start is­su­ing waivers, and said he should ap­point a White House of­fi­cial to run Guantánamo pol­i­cy with the au­thor­i­ty to re­solve in­ter­a­gen­cy dis­putes. For ex­am­ple, be­cause of dis­agree­ments over ev­i­dence taint­ed by tor­ture, the ad­min­is­tra­tion has missed by more than a year a dead­line to begin pa­role-style hear­ings by so-called Pe­ri­od­ic Re­view Boards. "There's more to be done, but these are the two es­sen­tial first steps the pres­i­dent can take now to break the Guantánamo log­jam," said An­tho­ny D. Romero, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union. An­oth­er group, the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights, which rep­re­sents de­tainees, urged Mr. Obama to lift his self-im­posed ban on repa­tri­a­tions to Yemen, where a branch of Al Qaeda is ac­tive. Of the 86 low-lev­el de­tainees who were des­ig­nat­ed in Jan­uary 2010 for po­ten­tial trans­fer but re­main in­car­cer­at­ed, 56 are Yeme­nis. Asked for greater de­tails about Mr. Obama's in­ten­tions, a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokeswom­an, Caitlin Hay­den, said the pres­i­dent was "con­sid­er­ing a range of op­tions for ways that we can re­duce the pop­u­la­tion there," in­clud­ing "reap­point­ing a se­nior of­fi­cial at the State De­part­ment to renew our focus on repa­tri­at­ing or trans­fer­ring" low­er-risk de­tainees. The ad­min­is­tra­tion re­as­signed the pre­vi­ous diplo­mat charged with that task in Jan­uary and has not re­placed him. "We will also work to fully im­ple­ment the Pe­ri­od­ic Re­view Board pro­cess, which we ac­knowl­edge has not moved for­ward quick­ly enough," she added. Mr. Obama was am­bigu­ous about one of the most dif­fi­cult prob­lems raised by Guantánamo: what to do with dozens of de­tainees deemed too risky to re­lease but not fea­si­ble to pros­e­cute. His pol­i­cy has been not to re­lease those pris­on­ers, but to con­tin­ue to im­prison them in­def­i­nite­ly under the laws of war — just some­where else. Yet at an­oth­er point, Mr. Obama ap­peared to ques­tion that pol­i­cy at a time when the war in Iraq has ended, the one in Afghanistan is wind­ing down and the orig­i­nal make­up of Al Qaeda has been dec­i­mat­ed.