Obama Admin. Wants Gitmo Closed, Yet Also Deem Prisoners Too Dangerous To Move

Video Transcript:

Defense Secretary Ash Carter agrees with President Obama that Guantanamo should be closed.

CARTER: I think – on balance – it would be a good thing to close Gitmo. I completely agree with President Obama.

But he also realizes how dangerous the prisoners are.

CARTER: But here’s the issue: There are people in Gitmo who are so dangerous that we cannot transfer them to the custody of another government, no matter how much we trust them. I can’t assure the president that it would be safe to do that.

So why is the administration hell-bent on closing the detention center?

OBAMA: I’ve said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo and I will follow through on that. I am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military advisors, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for organizations like ISIS.

But according to one of Obama’s own generals, that’s just not true.

GENERAL JOHN KELLY: I don’t believe, well, my belief is that people like these Islamic terrorists are focused on doing us so much harm – not because of Gitmo or wherever we house these guys – it’s really about us as a people, as a country. And what we stand for, the way we live our lives, the way we worship any god we want to worship, the way we educate and our little girls. That’s why they hate us. They don’t need Gitmo to hate us.

Senior Editor for the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes, said the president is flat out lying about Guantanamo.

HAYES: You know, when he was asked about Guantanamo just last week or two weeks ago, by Olivia Knox of Yahoo! News, he said that there had only been a handful of recidivists in the population of folks who have been released or transferred.

ANCHOR: So you’re saying he lied?

HAYES: The president said there have been a handful of recidivists, there have been in fact 196. The president said that the people who have been released were what he called, “low level individuals.” They’re not low level individuals at all! Many of them were top aides to Osama bin Laden, senior figures in the Afghan Taliban. The President of the United States has repeatedly lied about what’s happening at Guantanamo, about what he’s doing with Guantanamo detainees.

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