At a hearing this morning conducted by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Tom Cotton, a war veteran, chided the Obama administration’s justification to close the detention facility that has housed terrorism suspects since 2002. The administration’s witness was Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Brian McKeon, who defended President Obama’s policy that the facility needs to be closed because it is a national security risk.
In response to the administration’s view that the mere existence of the detention facility is a threat to national security, Cotton questioned McKeon on the number of detainees held at Guantanamo at the time of each major terror attack against the United States dating back 30-plus years before the facility opened. McKeon’s answer remained the same: “zero.”
Cotton responded by calling the (yet incomplete) plan to close it “political decision” and not a “security decision.” “To say that it is a security decision based on propaganda value that our enemies get from it is a pretext to justify a political decision” and that “[the terrorists] attack us for who we are.”
Cotton concluded: “The only problem of Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. We should be sending more terrorists there for interrogation to keep this country safe. As far as I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in hell, but since they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”
