His plan sets up a last-year confrontation with Congress about a campaign promise made eight years ago. Terrorists use Guantanamo as propaganda to recruit, and maintaining it harms U.S. national security, he said.
The plan has three elements beyond closing the prison, Obama said. More detainees will be safely transferred, reviewing the threat posed by detainees who are not eligible for transfer, and identifying those eligible for military trials.
“This plan has my full support," Obama said.
Obama said closing Guantanamo was something his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, supported, as did his 2008 Republican challenge, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Since then, however, the politics have got in the way, he said.
Obama said he was "very clear-eyed" about the challenges of closing Guantanamo. "If it were easy it would have happened years ago," he said.
McCain, who now chairs the Armed Services Committee, called the plan flimsy and said his committee would hold hearings on it soon.
What we received today is a vague menu of options, not a credible plan for closing Guantanamo, let alone a coherent policy to deal with future terrorist detainees,” McCain said in a statement. “After years of rhetoric, the president has still yet to say how and where he will house both current and future detainees, including those his administration has deemed as too dangerous to release.”
McCain said Obama had missed “a major chance to convince the Congress and the American people that he has a responsible plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.”
The plan does not indicate the prisons in the United States under consideration to transfer detainees, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.
“The administration seeks an active dialogue with Congress on this issue and looks forward to working with Congress to identify the most appropriate location as soon as possible,” Cook said.
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