House Dems refuse funds to close Gitmo, relocate inmates
Published: May 4, 2009
Updated 6 months ago
Democrats in the US House of Representatives unveiled a 94.2-billion-dollar emergency spending bill to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fight a flu pandemic, and a range of other outlays.
Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey said the panel would meet Thursday to take up the measure, which is 9.3 billion dollars above what US President Barack Obama requested.
Lawmakers dealt a blow to Obama’s push to close the suspected terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by stripping out the roughly 80 million dollars he sought for that purpose.
“I personally favor what the administration is talking about doing but so far as we can tell, there is yet no concrete program for that,” said Obey. “I’m not much interested in wasting my energy defending a theoretical program.”
The proposal also ties funding for Obama’s new Pakistan and Afghanistan strategy to requirements that the White House produce a report on both countries’ cooperation and performance in the fight against Islamists.
The House measure includes 78.4 billion dollars for the Defense Department — 4.7 billion dollars more than Obama’s request at a time when US forces are ramping up in Afghanistan and moving towards a full withdrawal from Iraq.
It would provide 3.2 billion dollars for military construction, primarily for hospitals, a 900-million-dollar increase over the administration’s request.
Obey’s plan also sets aside two billion dollars to boost the country’s ability to respond to a potential worsening of the swine flu outbreak. Obama had requested 1.5 billion.
He said the bill would provide 2.3 billion dollars for Pakistan, including 400 million dollars in counterinsurgency funds to Pakistan, but declared himself “extremely dubious” about the prospects for success in the region.
“I don’t believe that the Pakistan government and the Afghan government are sufficiently focused and organized and unified to deal with the problem” of militants, who thrive in the two countries’ lawless border region, he said.
But Obey insisted that he wanted Obama “to have the greatest possible ability to succeed, so we are providing virtually everything the president is asking for in order to give him the best possible chance to succeed.”
At the same time, a summary of the legislation provided by his office noted that funding would be tied to formal White House findings of how the Afghan and Pakistan governments are doing in the fight.
Within one year, Obama would have to provide a formal assessment of the political will “to confront the political and security challenges facing the region,” the status of anti-corruption campaigns, and the performance of security forces in counterinsurgency campaigns.
The report would also cover the role of intelligence agencies “in cooperating fully with the US and not undermining the security of our troops and our objectives in the region.”
And it would also assess “the ability of the government to control the territory within their borders,” according to the summary.
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We should not make the mistake of thinking that closing Guantanamo cleanses our hands of torture. Whether we close Guantanamo or not, the fact that the United States of America tortured people MUST be addressed, investigated AND prosecuted. Savagery tends to breed upon itself, and violence breeds violence. If we do not cleanse our nation of the torture our government sanctioned during the Bush Administration, then we may well face torture ourselves in the future, civilian and military alike. When savagery begins with one’s opponents, one may be soon seen as an opponent in another guise. Allow torture on foreign nationals today and the future may see “enhanced techniques” in one’s “police force” tomorrow in the guise of “preventing or solving crime”. Blood upon a slippery slope is far more slippery than mud. History has proven this time and time again.
Obey takes the cake.
Is this guy for real…even without even acknowledging the absolute war crime that Gitmo was based on, this guy is already to bang the war drums for Pakistan. One assumes that if they ramp up Pakistan, they will still have need for Gitmo since the original idea of having a secret system of gulags not bound by the rule of law, to torture the enemy will still a need — then since the US hasn’t repudiated any of their war crimes and still lie regardless of whom is in charge of their corrupt empire.
Symptomatic of a heart grown cold. The remaining political discourse is hallucinogenic delusion.
Dredd,
This goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond some “heart grown cold” nonsense. It has to do with a corrupt, parasitic one-party system which charades as two.
I know you can’t bear to be critical of your beloved “Dem Team” parasites which are no different in the big scheme of things than the “Repug Team” parasites. But you’ll never grasp that because you were indoctrinated with that party-line nonsense.
I live under no illusion that messiah Obama will close any of these concentration camps or end torture. He’s a war criminal just like the ones he’s protecting. Some of the Obamabots are waking up to that facts. Others never will. People like Dredd. Some people are as useless as tits on a bull hog.
Obama’s a warm and friendly guy who’s reaching out to the world. But all the smiles and warm fuzzies are not going to erase the legal problem that torture took place, and the proof is available.
Not only are these Dems morons, they are fucking morons.
While closing GITMO will not diminish the relevance of the torture issue, it would go a looooooooooooooong way in showing that we are serious about returning this country to the rule of law.
Could the Dems be providing cover for Obama. He says in the campaign that he will close GITMO but really doesn’t intend to. He proposes it and has the Dems defeat his “initiative”. He gets to say he tried, and they all get to keep the illegal gulag for future war prisoners.
Could the Dems be providing cover for Obama. He says in the campaign that he will close GITMO but really doesn’t intend to? He proposes it and has the Dems defeat his “initiative”. He gets to say he tried, and they all get to keep the illegal gulag for future war prisoners.
corrected punctuation
Candidate Barack Hussein Obama:
“There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was.”
The WTF are we doing there?
(live under no illusion that messiah Obama will close any of these concentration camps or end torture. He’s a war criminal just like the ones he’s protecting. Some of the Obamabots are waking up to that facts)
….and his hands get bloodier every day.