National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. COTTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gen tle lady from Indiana for her effort on this very important amendment. For 4-plus years, the Obama administration has declined to transfer these terrorists at Guantanamo to Yemen. I would suggest that nothing has changed, if you look at the facts of the matter.
Yemen remains a partner in our war on terror, but it still has weak capabilities. It still has not yet demonstrated the ability to house such terrorists or to deter terrorist activity in its own quarters as we've seen from things like the underwear bombing plot or the Fort Hood massacre. If we transfer these terrorists to Yemen, we cannot know for sure that it will not mean more attacks on our soldiers in Afghanistan, on our Ambassadors at our Embassies around the world, on our citizens around the world, here in the United States, or in allied countries.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this temporary and restrained amendment to ensure that terrorists at Guantanamo Bay do not escape back onto the battlefronts of the war on terror.
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Mr. COTTON. I oppose this amendment. I oppose the closure of Guantanamo and the transfer of detainees to the United States.
Guantanamo is a state-of-the-art detention facility in which we've invested millions of dollars in which our troops handle themselves with utmost professionalism.
The detainees there have access to military tribunals and habeas corpus proceedings here in Washington, D.C.
Who are these detainees? They're not innocent goat herders swept up by a marauding United States military of which I was a part in which I detained numerous potential terrorists. They are people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11; Mohammed al-Qahtani, one of the would-be participants in 9/11; terrorists who are closely associated with Osama bin Laden who have received explosives training, who are recruiters, who are poison experts, who are suicide bombers or who are commanders of al Qaeda training camps. I do not think we should bring them to the United States, give them their Miranda warnings, give them an attorney at taxpayer-provided expense and if acquitted and not accepted by their home countries be released back onto the streets of the United States.
If that is what the advocates of this amendment would like, I suggest they should write their amendment in a fashion that would bring these detainees to their own congressional districts.
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