Obama's Gitmo claim 'palpably false'
Obama seems surprised that the premise of his argument for closing Gitmo has been challenged. It is a premise for which it is impossible to provide proof and at best there may be some hearsay intelligence chatter. Some in the Pentagon have accepted the premise rather than defend the quality of their facility, which would be difficult to duplicate inside the US. We should not close it because of liberal or enemy PR efforts.The No.2 Republican in the Senate took President Obama to task Sunday for claiming Guantanamo Bay created more terrorists than it ever detained by serving as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., called the charge "palpably false" and said the White House has not provided any evidence to back up the claim.
"He meant to say that 770 people or more became terrorists because we have a prison at Guantanamo?" Kyl said on "FOX News Sunday."
"9/11 hijackers didn't do their deeds because of Gitmo. The people who ... blew up the (U.S.S.) Cole or the Kolbar Towers or the first World Trade Center didn't say, 'There's Gitmo down there,' because it didn't exist. And even after that I don't think you saw guys sitting around in some coffee shop in Saudi Arabia, saying, 'You know, those Americans have this prison called Gitmo, I think I'll become a terrorist,'" he said. "I mean, it's palpably false to suggest that the existence of Gitmo created terrorism, and yet the president gets away with that."
Republicans have exploited tensions and concerns among Democrats, and their constituents, over where the Guantanamo detainees will eventually be transferred should Obama follow through on his plan to close the prison by January 2010. Kyl's comments hammered the GOP theme that closing Guantanamo is not as inevitable or necessary as the administration makes it out to be.
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Obama seems suprised when ANYTHING he says is challenged. He seems to think he really is The Savior Of America, when by his very actions he proves he is just the opposite.
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