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President Obama can’t take no for an answer.
Today, he once again proclaimed, “I am absolutely committed to closing the detention facility at Guantánamo [Bay, Cuba]” (GITMO) – including bringing deadly terrorists into the U.S., treating them as criminals not enemy combatants.
GITMO houses the worst of the worst – avowed jihadists pledged to destroy America. Yet President Obama is once again demanding Congress overwrite existing law and pass new legislation to close down GITMO.
Of course President Obama has been working all along to undermine GITMO, releasing dozens of deadly terrorists – 1 in 3 of whom end up back on the battlefield to kill again.
President Obama, stop trying to make closing GITMO happen. It’s not going to happen.
Why you ask? Because the American people (and their duly elected representatives in Congress) know that closing GITMO is nothing more than a political ploy – one more attempt at keeping an ill-conceived and dangerous campaign promise.
As ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow noted,
It underscores the blatant political nature of this President during his two terms in office. . . . Closing GITMO not only places America in grave danger, it bootstraps the next President – continuing a foreign policy that is dangerous to America – a foreign policy that makes it even more difficult to succeed in the War on Terror.
As I’ve detailed before, President Obama’s political ploy to release deadly terrorists – and he released nearly a dozen more “hardcore” jihadists from GITMO just last month – leaves us increasingly more vulnerable:
The security threats are escalated by the astounding recidivism rate of released GITMO terrorists. Of the dozens of lower level terrorist detainees already released, 1 in 3 of these jihadist terrorists have ended up back on the battlefield.
For example, just last month Ibrahim al-Qosi, a former top bin Laden aid who was released three years ago after spending a decade at GITMO, was discovered to have become a senior leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. [And the list of deadly jihadists being released goes on and on.]
Releasing these battle-hardened terrorists only to have them plot and kill again is a dereliction of President Obama’s sworn duty to protect America. . . .
When 1 in 3 of those terrorists have already proven to return to the battlefield – including in senior leadership positions – how could releasing these enemy combatants and closing a detention facility in the middle of a war – and make no mistake, we are at war – be anything but pure absurdity?
And today, there are breaking reports that a released GITMO detainee was just arrested for recruiting jihadists to join ISIS – the Islamic State. As Moroccan and Spanish authorities stated:
“One of the leaders of the cell received military and combat training in camps in Afghanistan under the authority of terrorist jihadist organizations . . . . In 2002 he was detained and later put in the Guantanamo detention camp. The fact that this leader was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics makes this cell particularly dangerous.”
These are the kinds of terrorists President Obama has been releasing in his blind pursuit of closing GITMO.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has already indicated that President Obama’s latest scheme to close GITMO is rightly dead on arrival.
Yet, President Obama has a disturbing history. When Congress doesn’t give him what he wants, he tries to go it alone. He circumvents the Constitution with unilateral Executive actions. That’s not how our system of government works. It’s not how the Constitution works. It’s not how any of this works.
The American people are resolute. Already nearly 90,000 Americans are taking action by joining our petition to keep GITMO open and stop releasing terrorists.
At the ACLJ, we will continue fighting the battle, working directly in Congress. And we will be ready to defeat any Executive lawless in court should President Obama’s past be prologue.
Matthew Clark is Senior Counsel for Digital Advocacy with the ACLJ and Contributing Editor at RedState. Follow Matthew Clark: @_MatthewClark.
The post President Obama, Stop Trying to Make Closing GITMO Happen. It’s Not Going to Happen. appeared first on RedState.