Obama has the power to close the prison himself, but the Pentagon has determined it cannot be done without moving most of the remaining 91 prisoners to detention centers on U.S. soil.
Congress passed a law in 2011 banning the terrorists from transfer to America, however, and the Obama administration has acknowledged that the legislative branch must rescind the law for its current plan to work.
'I am absolutely committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo,' Obama said this morning. 'I'm gonna continue to make the case for doing so as long as I hold this office.'
The president said today that 'keeping this facility open is contrary to our values. It undermines our standing in the world.'
Moments after Obama spoke, Senate Armed Forces Chairman John McCain signaled that the plan had no hope of making it out of his committee and was dead on arrival and other Republicans soon piled on.
In accordance with today's congressional deadline demanding a road map to shut the Cuba-based facility, the Pentagon is proposing that nearly 60 of the remaining 91 terror suspects be transferred to United States.
Obama said in a statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House that the continued existence of the camp is 'counter productive' to the country's anti-terror measures and said it is a 'stain on our broader record.
Plus, it is an inefficient use of tax dollars, he argued. It took $450 million last year alone to keep it up and running and will cost another $200 million to keep it open in the future.
'This plan has my full support it reflects our best thinking on how to best go after terrorists,' Obama said of the Pentagon-submitted plan.
The issue of how to close Guantanamo is one that has been plaguing Obama since he took office.
'I don't want to pass this problem on to the next president whoever it is,' said the U.S. president, who is in his final year in office. 'And if as a nation we don't deal with this now, when will we deal with it?'
He asked rhetorically, 'Are we going to let this linger on for another 15 years, another 20 years another 30 years?'
'If we don't do what's required now, I think future generations are going to look back and ask why we failed to act when the right course, the right side of history, and justice, and our best American traditions was clear.'
Now his administration is asking to bring them to the U.S.
The Pentagon blueprints propose sending 35 prisoners who have been cleared for transfer to either their homelands or third countries, and bringing the others— described as 'the most dangerous prisoners' by CNN — back to maximum-security prisons on US soil.
It does not say where though, angering lawmakers who live in states with prisons named as possible sites in the past.
According to Reuters, Pentagon officials have already surveyed a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, a military jail at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina.
Sending the terrorists to the U.S. is an option that will require the approval of Congress, which banned the action in 2011.
McCain, a Republican senator who also backs the closure of the facility, described the Obama administration plan as 'a vague menu of options, not a credible plan...let alone a coherent policy to deal with future terrorist detainees.'
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst called the plan 'reckless' and called the camp 'vital' to national security.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a statement that 'it is dangerous and irresponsible to close Guantanamo Bay.'
Posted by Kris Akudo at 1:55 PM
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