Obama Announces Plan to Close Guantanamo Bay For Good
President Obama today announced a plan to close Guantanamo Bay, the seven-year culmination of the promise he made during the 2008 election.
There are still 91 detainees in custody at the facility, which was opened in 2002.
The president announced the four-part plan during a televised address from the Roosevelt Room on Tuesday morning, calling on Congress to approve the measure, which was first proposed by the Pentagon.
Under the proposal, eligible detainees would be transferred to one of 13 prisons in the United States, the exact location of which remains to be determined. According to CNN, a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado; a military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas; and the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina are all on the table as potential sites after Pentagon officials developed prototype plans to convert them into federal detention facilities.
Renovations on a new site are expected to cost as much as $475 million, but the plan is ultimately expected to save the U.S. somewhere between $65 and $85 million a year in operating costs.
And that’s if the Republicans even allow the measure to pass—according to CNN, conservative lawmakers required language on at least two recent bills barring the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. Even so, the White House has not, according to reports, ruled out unilateral action.
