Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) used the Republican weekly address to suggest that President Obama’s last-ditch push to shutter the Guantánamo Bay detention facility is a move to make the U.S. more “timid.”
“This whole debate is just a distraction from the president’s failure to defeat ISIS,” Walorski, a member the House Armed Services Committee, said in the address released Saturday, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “But it does speak to a larger point: The president seems to think as if a more timid America would keep us safe. We, in the House, could not disagree more.
{mosads}”We think a confident America is what keeps the peace. A confident America is what will make us secure,” she added. “So we will continue to do all we can in the House to hold the president accountable, to keep terrorists off our soil and to keep the American people safe.”
Republicans this week roundly blasted Obama’s proposal to close the military prison, which he vowed to do when entering office but has struggled to see come to fruition. Democrats also expressed uneasiness about his plan.
Obama’s push this week comes ahead of his trip to Cuba in March, and the flat reception his proposal received in Congress underscores the challenge to fulfilling the campaign promise in his final year in office.
There are currently 91 detainees at Guantánamo, down from the 241 when Obama took office. His plan would bring the remaining 46 who aren’t set to be transferred to other countries or tried by military commissions to a facility on U.S. soil. But Republicans have opposed changing the law to bring the prisoners to the U.S., among other issues.
“The president isn’t talking about trying to move people to the United States prison system that are low-level criminals or terrorists. These are the worst of the worst,” Walorski said, mentioning 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
“Not only that, but 30 percent of former Guantánamo prisoners are either confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorism,” Walorski said. “In fact, just this week, a former Guantánamo prisoner was arrested in Spain after trying to recruit for ISIS.
“There’s a reason these terrorists are in Guantánamo. And we should keep them there.”