FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Contact:
Michael A Zachariades
Michael@MilitaryFamiliesUnited.org
(202) 510-5304

 

Washington, DC – Kirk S. Lippold, Former USS Cole Commander and Senior Military Fellow at Military Families United (MFU), released the following statement concerning President Obama’s announcement that suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) prison will be transferred to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois:

“After a year of secret deliberations, countless meetings with the ACLU, unaccountable task forces, and a few dozen dangerous detainees set free, President Obama has finally found a way to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by spending countless millions to create ‘GITMO North’ here in the United States. With the announcement today, to open Guantanamo Bay North in Thompson, Illinois, the Administration is now adding economic manipulation to its bag of tricks to convince the American people that somehow they will be better off if terrorists are held and tried in our towns and communities, instead of a state-of-the-art detention facility built for that purpose. GITMO North is not the answer.

Obama’s Guantanamo Bay North will provide new Constitutional rights to suspected terrorists, eviscerate the Military Commissions process, and provide a platform for America’s enemies to churn out their hateful rhetoric for the world to see. As defendants in civilian courts suspected terrorists will have access to, and the ability to, compromise the often classified intelligence that is used to hold them. They could also use their platform in our own criminal justice system to recruit other jihadists. The Administration characteristically has no answers to the critical questions that remain. The President seems content to rely on the mere hope that no detainees will walk free from a civilian court on a technicality and that no classified intelligence will leak. Hope is not a national security strategy.

When the President signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay, he did so without understanding the effects of that decision. Now, it appears the citizens of this great nation are one step closer to paying a heavy price for that ignorance. Again, the President and his Administration have chosen to disregard critical national security and legal issues for the sake of political expediency. Congress and the American people must now stand up and prevent our communities, our justice system and our hard-earned money from being used by the Administration to prop-up, perhaps, the most dangerous campaign promise ever uttered.”