The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday promised to hold a hearing on the administration’s plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, but said the chances of it moving forward are “exceedingly dim.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the plan is largely a “rehash” of policies already in place, not a recommendation on how to move ahead. The plan lacks specifics, he said, including a site to hold Gitmo detainees in America, a concrete cost estimate to do so and a plan for what to do with future prisoners of war.
“This is not a plan. This is a series of facts, a wish list that is non-specific and it clearly does not meet the requirements that we laid out in law requiring them to submit a specific plan,” McCain said during a news conference on Capitol Hill.
McCain said he would hold a hearing on the proposal, submitted to Congress on Tuesday, “within a week or two.” He said he hopes to get answers to questions about location and cost that the plan didn’t address.
“Right now, we really have nothing but an eight-page document of facts,” he said. “Therefore, I would suggest that the prospects of any real action by the Congress of the United States is exceedingly dim.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who joined McCain and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., in criticizing what the White House presented, said he believes the U.S. can hold wartime prisoners within the continental United States, pointing to Nazis who were held by the U.S. during World War II. But because of the vagueness of the plan, the lack of leadership from President Obama and the short time remaining during his time as president, the “time to do this has passed,” Graham said.
“I want to take this proposal and have a hearing about it, because it’s gibberish, and I want everybody who has a better idea to come forward,” Graham said.
The administration presented a plan to Congress on Tuesday to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which would continue to transfer detainees to other countries, review prisoners to see if more could be released and move those who couldn’t to a location in the U.S. The report talks about 13 sites, but does not name them or recommend a specific one, instead describing a prototype site where detainees could be kept.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Tuesday that the plan is vague to allow for congressional input since lawmakers will have the “ultimate say” as to whether and how a plan moves forward.
Asked repeatedly about a flurry of congressional opposition in the hours after the plan was released, Cook kept pointing out that it was still early and that the administration was looking to begin a conversation with lawmakers on the proposal.
“We just presented the plan. Did they vote this afternoon and I missed?” he said.
