Gitmo Closure

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, I pointed out that the President's war funding request contains up to $80 million to close the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. The administration says Guantanamo will be closed by next January. What they haven't told us is what they plan to do with these killers once it closes. Well, Americans want some assurances that closing Guantanamo will not make them less safe. Frankly, that is a very important and understandable request.

Guantanamo currently houses some of the most dangerous men alive. These are men who are proud of the innocent lives they have taken and who want to return to terrorism. One person who is there, and whom we don't know what we will do with, is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. We captured him while he was planning followup attacks to 9/11, including plots to destroy a West Coast skyscraper and to smuggle explosives into New York. If we hadn't captured him, he may have succeeded in launching the same type of attack on the west coast that he carried out on the east coast. This is a man who brags about decapitating the American journalist Daniel Pearl, with the following quote: ``..... with my blessed right hand.'' How does transferring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed make the country safer?

Another person at Guantanamo that the administration doesn't know what it will do with in 9 months is Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who served as a key lieutenant for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during the 9/11 operation. How does transferring him make the country safer?

Then there is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. He was al-Qaida's operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula and the mastermind behind the attack on the USS Cole which killed 17 sailors in 2000. How does transferring or releasing him make our country safer?

These are just 3 of the 240 terrorists that the administration doesn't know what to do with. The one thing they do know is that they claim they are going to close Guantanamo in 9 months, even though they can't say yet whether the alternative is as safe and secure. All of this, despite the fact that after visiting Guantanamo for the first time recently, Attorney General Holder said he was ``impressed by the people who are presently running the camp'' and that ``the facilities there are good ones.''

That was certainly my impression when I went there a few years ago.

The administration needs to tell the American people what it plans to do with these men if it closes Guantanamo. Two years ago, the Senate voted 94 to 3--94 to 3--against sending these men to the United States. Foreign countries have so far been unwilling to take any of them in significant numbers--understandably. Even if countries were willing to take them, there is an increasing probability that some of these murderers would return to the battlefield. The Defense Department recently confirmed that 18 former detainees had returned to the battlefield and said that at least 40 more are suspected of having done so. These are people we have already released who are back on the battlefield.

Earlier this year, the Saudi Government said that nearly a dozen Saudis who were released from Gitmo are believed to have returned to terrorism.

The administration has made a priority of closing Guantanamo, but its first priority should be to assure the American people that the detainees at Gitmo will never again be able to harm Americans.

ENTITLEMENT SPENDING

Mr. President, I wish to say another word in addition to my comments yesterday about the President's welcome gesture on wasteful spending. The Cabinet has been asked to find $100 million in savings over the next few months and this is clearly a step in the right direction, but it is just a step. Current levels of Government spending and debt are completely and totally out of control and the threat of a fiscal catastrophe is very real. The only way to address this out-of-control spending is to get at the heart of the problem, which is entitlement spending. A lot of people do not realize that nearly 70 percent of the money the Federal Government spends every year is mandatory spending on very popular programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and on the interest we have to pay on the national debt.

Entitlements are the heart of the problem. As Willie Sutton put it: That's where the money is. And if we don't find a way to address this spending, we will be in very serious trouble as a nation. Fortunately, Senators Gregg and Conrad have a proposal on the table that addresses entitlement spending head on, by forcing Democrats and Republicans to come together and make the kind of tough choices necessary to steer the country out of an otherwise inevitable financial shipwreck. It deserves much more attention than it has received, and it deserves a vote here in the Senate.

Cutting $100 million in waste is certainly good, but let's put it in context. The amount of money the President asked the Cabinet to save yesterday,
$100 million, is about how much we will spend every single day on interest on the stimulus bill we passed a while back. Mr. President, $100 million in savings is certainly good. It amounts to about 33 cents for every single American. Compare that to entitlement spending where, in order to meet all our current and future entitlement promises, we would have to extract $495,000 from every American household--$495,000 from every American household. The way I see it, there is simply no question as to where the priority should be.

I yield the floor.

Source