REPORT President Trump Planning To Sign Order To Keep Gitmo Open
Remember when Obama claimed one of his first acts as president would be to shut down the
prison at Guantanamo Bay?
Yeah, that didn't happen.
And now Trump is planning to sign a new order to make sure it stays open.
Politico reports:
Trump plans to sign order keeping Gitmo open, leaked doc reveals
President Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that would reverse an Obama-era
directive to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a draft
document obtained by POLITICO.
Trump is expected to announce plans to sign the order during his State of the Union speech
on Tuesday, or in the days before or after the address, a person familiar with the issue
said.
The executive order, according to a draft State Department cable that officials are
planning to soon send to U.S. embassies around the world, would rescind part of a separate
2009 order signed by then-President Barack Obama mandating that the facility be "closed
as soon as practicable."…
Trump promised during the presidential campaign to keep the Guantanamo Bay detention center
open, saying in February 2016 he wanted to "load it up with bad dudes."
Last year, he said he was considering sending a man who rammed a truck into people in New
York City to the facility.
It is also a rebuke to Trump's predecessor, Obama, who worked for years to close the detention
center, which he warned was a recruitment tool for terrorist groups.
In a sign of his commitment to the issue, Obama signed his executive order on his second
full day as president.
Trump has yet to send any captured terrorist to the controversial detention camp, and the
cable suggests that is not about to change.
"At this time, we are not aware of any plans to bring additional detainees to Guantanamo
Bay," the cable says.
The draft cable instructs U.S. diplomats to begin informing officials from other countries
about the executive order after the State of the Union speech, though embassies in London,
Paris, Berlin and a few other cities can begin filling in foreign governments on Monday "with
the request that they should not discuss the matter publicly until after the address."
The cable includes talking points designed to assuage the concerns of allies likely to
criticize Trump's decision.
The facility is reviled in Europe and beyond as a symbol of U.S. excess in the fight against
terrorists and the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques that critics equate with torture.
There are evil people in the world who are at war with the United States.
We have to have a place to put them.
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