Guantanamo And The Supplemental

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, 2 years ago, our Nation was in the midst of a global battle against terrorism, and much of our time and energy in the Senate was devoted to that fight, from updating laws for monitoring terrorists overseas, to fighting an insurgency in Iraq, to combating the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Two years later, we are still engaged in the same battle and in many of the same debates. On most of these issues, the Senate has had an opportunity to express itself very clearly. Yet rarely has it done so with as much unity as on the question of whether to send terrorists at Guantanamo to U.S. soil. On that important question, the vote was 94 to 3 against.

But something has changed. Now a number of Democrats who voted against sending detainees from Guantanamo to the United States are expressing a willingness to do so, in contradiction of their earlier vote. What has changed? America is still at war against terror networks around the world. The detainees held at Guantanamo are still some of the most dangerous terrorists alive. Indeed, over the past 2 years, the inmates there have been winnowed down to an even higher percentage of committed killers than were there before. Americans still do not want these men in their neighborhoods. They saw what the residents of Alexandria, VA, endured a few years ago when just one terrorist was held there, and they do not want armed agents patrolling their streets, ID checks, bomb-sniffing dogs, or millions of their tax dollars diverted to secure terrorists.

When we voted on this question 2 years ago, the prospect of shipping terrorists to U.S. soil was not imminent, even though the previous administration had expressed a desire to close the facility at some point. The new administration, on the other hand, set an arbitrary date for closure before it even had a chance to review the intelligence and the evidence of the 240 men who are down at Guantanamo now.

So I think it is perfectly appropriate, as we look to ensure the safety of the American people, to have another vote on this issue. Later this week, we will have an opportunity to do just that as the Senate takes up the supplemental war spending bill. The administration has requested funds within this bill to close Guantanamo, and Senators should take this opportunity to clarify their positions. So we will have a number of amendments this week on the supplemental that will allow the Senate to express itself once again on this most important issue.

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