WASHINGTON — President Bar ack Obama fought Thursday to retake command of the emotional debate over closing Guantanamo, denouncing “fear-mongering” by political opponents and insisting that maximum-security prisons in the U.S. can safely house dangerous terror suspects transferred from Cuba.
Obama made his case moments before former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered his own address defending the Bush administration’s creation of the prison camp as vigorously as the new president denounced it.
Obama, appearing at the National Archives with its symbolic backdrop of the nation’s founding documents, said shutting down Guantanamo would “enlist our values” to make America safer.
Speaking a day after an overwhelming congressional rebuke to his pledge to close the prison, he forcefully declared the camp a hindrance — not a help — to preventing future terrorist attacks. He contends that the prison, which has held hundreds of detainees for years without charges or trials, motivates U.S. enemies overseas.
The president promised to work with lawmakers to develop “an appropriate legal regime” for those who can’t be tried and are too dangerous to be released. Still, he did not provide the level of detail about his plans that lawmakers, including Democrats, demanded in a 90-6 Senate vote denying money for the shutdown.
Cheney, in his own speech, denounced some of Obama’s actions since taking office as “unwise in the extreme” and “recklessness cloaked in righteousness,” repeating his contention from a series of appearances recently that the new president is endangering the country by turning aside Bush-era policies.
However, neither Cheney nor Obama brought significant new information to bear on the debate that has roiled Washington for weeks. Instead, each presented what amounted to lengthy — and dueling — summations of entrenched positions. Reaction afterward followed well-tilled ground as well, with no sign that Obama was winning the votes he will need to close the prison.
As Obama has made one decision after another on Bush-era terror-fighting tools, liberals have expressed dismay at what they view as a Democratic president acting much like his Republican predecessor.
They cite Obama’s moves to reverse himself and fight the court-ordered release of prisoner-abuse photos, to revive military tribunals for some terror suspects, to oppose a truth commission to investigate past detainee treatment, and to continue using in some cases Bush’s “state secrets” doctrine that claims unchecked presidential power to prevent information disclosure in court.
On the other side, Obama has invited conservative criticism for banning harsh “enhanced” methods of interrogating terrorist suspects, for releasing memos detailing the techniques and the Bush administration’s legal justification for them, and for promising to close the Guantanamo Bay facility by next January.
The White House announced Thursday’s speech last week shortly after news surfaced that Cheney was planning his. Aides scheduled it for the hour just before the former vice president’s planned appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think thank.
The aim was to rebut Cheney’s campaign, but it also had the effect of elevating Cheney to equal billing in television shows, webcasts and newspapers.
Obama said he was doing away with the “poorly planned, haphazard approach” under the Bush administration that has seen a portion of the 525 detainees released from Guantanamo return to the battlefield. To do so, his administration was studying each Guantanamo case one by one.
Republicans were not impressed.
“With all due respect to the president, what we need here is not a speech but a plan,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Cheney, meanwhile, praised Obama for two “wise” decisions — his handling of the war in Afghanistan and his decision on the prisoner-abuse photographs.
But he forcefully defended the Bush administration’s interrogation program and other policies enacted in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Seven-and-a-half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned,” Cheney said.
