Stakeout With Senator Mitch McConnell Following The Weekly Senate Policy Committee Luncheon

Press Conference

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SEN. MCCONNELL: Good afternoon, everyone. When we turn to the vote on the supplemental appropriation, obviously, the debate will largely be about the future of the $200-million state-of-the-art detention facility at Guantanamo, from which no one has escaped since 9/11.

The president -- unwisely, in my view -- announced an arbitrary timeline for closing Guantanamo of next January, without a plan to deal with the terrorists who are incarcerated down there. All of you know that, among those who've been released, about 12 percent of them have gone back to the fight. We've had difficulty getting European countries to receive these prisoners.

And it makes you, you know, wonder why we're closing it in the first place. Is it to garner popularity in Europe? I doubt if this alone would make us popular in Europe.

It's been suggested that it has somehow agitated terrorists and made them more likely to strike us. Well, I would remind you, before we started using Guantanamo, after 9/11, the terrorists were already striking us. They had gone after the World Trade Center in the early '90s, gone after our embassies in Africa in the mid-'90s, blown a hole in the USS Cole and killed 17 sailors during the Clinton administration. The terrorists were already at war with us before we captured any of them and started detaining them at Guantanamo.

So all of these rationales for closing this facility strike me as not making a whole lot of sense.

Now, I understand our friends on the other side of the aisle are, shall I say, moving in our direction rapidly on this issue. We expect they will offer some amendment related to Guantanamo.

Regardless of what form that finally takes, we will be offering a number of amendments.

The lead one will be from Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is right here. And I'm going to ask Senator Inhofe to give you his take on this and describe the amendment he'll be offering.

Jim.

SEN. INHOFE: Thank you.

I've had the opportunity several times to be at Gitmo. The first time, I think, it was about a week after 9/11 -- (inaudible) -- went down to look and see what the facility is. The interesting thing right now is, if you ask the question, why was is so many people are talking about closing it, then you can't really answer the question.

Every team that's gone down there, including our current attorney general, has come back and said they're doing things right. There haven't been cases of torture. There's not -- they have one doctor for every two detainees that's down there. They have a lawyer for everybody down there, better treatment, better humane treatment, than any place in the United States.

And so the question is, we don't get very many good deals in government. We're only paying $4,000 a year for that thing. We've been doing it since 1903. And I can't see we should turn down simply one of the few good deals that we have.

The problem I'm having, and that we're having, is that the Democrats keep moving back and forth on this. If you remember, when the inauguration speech came up, President Obama didn't say anything at all about that. And then later on, during his State of the Union, he said that he was ready to close it down and stop any kind of tribunals going on down there. And he got a standing ovation by all the Democrats.

Now they're seeing that there's a lot of ink there. They're -- we don't know what kind of amendment they're coming up with. But we feel united in wanting to do something to make sure we keep that resource down there and we -- since there's no alternative.

The leader just now said that he's -- that we're in a position where we don't know for sure what is going to come down the pike, in the way of an amendment. But we do know this. You have to figure out what to do, with some 245 detainees, most of whom are pretty bad guys. Their countries won't take them back. And there is no place else to put them.

Now, with that in mind, I think, the only way, we think, the only way, as Republicans, that we're going to be able to stop this giving away of this resource would be to pass an amendment that says no to three things. No funds would be necessary.

It would prohibit all funds that would go to the transfer of anyone to the continental United States.

It would prohibit all funds that would go to enhancing any resources that we have in the United States. And thirdly, it would prohibit any funds to house anyone in the United States. Now, if we do that, since we know there's no place else, I really believe we'll be able to keep a resource open.

Let's keep in mind it's not just the 245 that are there now. It's -- with the increasing activity in Afghanistan, there's no place else to put many of them. You can say, well, Bagrade (ph) and Sandahar (ph) are both prisons in Afghanistan. Well, the problem with that is, they will only take detainees that are from Afghanistan; not from Yemen, not from Saudi Arabia or someplace else.

So it's something we need to keep open. I think the best way to do it is not allow them to send these to the United States. And I think it's a (winning ?) issue. It is something we ought to do.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Take a couple of questions if there are any.

SEN. INHOFE: Yeah.

Q (Off mike) -- continental United States or in the United States?

SEN. INHOFE: In the United States and (U.S. ?) territories

Q Senator McConnell, is there any -- is it your position that Guantanamo should house these detainees indefinitely? Could the White House come up with a plan that might be satisfactory to you guys?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, my view, as I've stated repeatedly -- I even differed with the last president on this -- is that Guantanamo is the perfect place for these terrorists. However, if the president ends up making -- sticking with this decision to close it next January, obviously they need a place to be. It ought not to be the United States of America.

And I would say this for the president, he has shown some flexibility on some of these national security issues. If you recall, he was originally going to release interrogation memos, decided not to -- or the photographs at Abu Ghraib, decided not to; originally going to end our presence in Iraq with an arbitrary deadline, decided not to; and has now ordered a surge in Afghanistan by the same people who executed a successful surge in Iraq.

So the president has shown some flexibility on national security issues. I hope he will have some flexibility on the -- on the detainee facility at Guantanamo, because it really has worked very, very well. No one has escaped from Guantanamo since 9/11; no one. And we know that the communities in America do not want these terrorists.

Q Sir, could you maybe explain the difference between, say -- (inaudible) -- someone like Moussaoui -- (inaudible)?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, I'll be glad to. We had the Moussaoui trial, which is an experience of what a community has when they have a terrorist in their midst. Ask the mayor of Alexandria how he feels about having another one.

And, by the way, they only had one -- just one -- terrorist in Alexandria. They had to shut down the traffic every time they moved the guy around. They were worried about being a target of terrorist attacks.

When you have a terrorist, and a -- even incarcerated -- and this administration was actually talking about freeing some to be free, to run around in the United States, like the Uighurs, but let's assume that they are incarcerated -- it is a serious problem. It makes your community a target for terrorist attack. It creates disruptions of all kinds. And for proof of that, I ask you to call the mayor of Alexandria, who's been widely quoted about his experience with Moussaoui and whether or not he wants to have any more experiences.

Q But supermax, there haven't been any jailbreaks or anything of that sort.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, U.S. jails are typically for U.S. citizens. These are foreign terrorists detained on the battlefield in the war on terror.

You know, you also raised -- a lot of complicated legal questions when you bring them to the United States. Are you going to extend the Bill of Rights' protections to a foreign terrorist captured overseas in the United States? If you did that, that terrorist would have more rights under our Constitution than an American citizen in a military court.

It raises all kinds of complicated issues that don't need to be dealt with. We've got the perfect place for them right now at Guantanamo, and I'm hoping the president will reconsider.

Q This is -- now for weeks, (warning ?) --

SEN. MCCONNELL: I can't hear you.

Q You've been making floor speeches in the chamber for weeks now warning about the possible consequences of shutting down Gitmo without a plan. Democrats now seem to be retreating from their plan to put funding in the supplemental on this. Is this a political victory for you and your party?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, they're certainly coming in the right direction. And I think the American people who are concerned about their own security and safety ought to be pleased that our friends on the other side of the aisle are showing some flexibility on this issue and heading in our direction. I hope they'll come all the way, and I hope the president will demonstrate the same kind of flexibility on this issue that he has on some other national-security issues that I outlined earlier.

Thanks, everybody.

SEN. INHOFE: Could I -- I want to mention one other thing that wasn't mentioned. That is, we're really dealing with two issues here. One is, what do you do with a facility that works, and why give it away?

But the other one is that -- how are you going to handle the adjudication of detainees? The -- right now, we have the (expeditionary/extraditionary ?) court down there. It cost us $12 million to build it, took 12 months.

And we are now set up for tribunals, and we have been conducting tribunals.

If you don't do that, the alternative could be to send these people into our court system, where the rules of evidence are different. And very likely, many of them will not be prosecuted -- a very significant thing.

I think -- I haven't found anyone who's been down there, from the media -- including Al-Jazeera, who went down -- who didn't come back, shaking their heads, saying, "Why would you close an opportunity like this?"

Q Couldn't they hold the military commissions anywhere, though?

SEN. INHOFE: No. No, they couldn't, because it takes a certain kind of courtroom where they can use some things in confidence that the public can't have, that would not be entitled to. And it has to be set up just for this purpose. I don't know of anywhere that it is set up this way now, except for Gitmo.

Q Well, wasn't a courtroom built -- (inaudible) -- temporary?

SEN. INHOFE: Didn't look temporary to me. I've been down there several times. It's -- it's functioning.

And I will say this for the president. He had shut down all hearings and tribunals. He has now allowed them to open up again, it's my understanding. But this is one of the problems we have: It's a moving target.

Q Thank you.

SEN. INHOFE: Thank you.

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