Conservative Blogger
Monday, November 9, 2015
The high price the world could pay for Obama’s Syria, Iraq policy
As I’ve discussed on Fox News.com before, President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy is not a policy. It is a non-policy to do as little as possible about the chaos in these countries so he can hand this mess to the next president.
The Obama administration has announced two major policy shifts in two years to deal with the Iraq/Syria crisis and the threat from ISIS. Neither exhibited the decisive leadership that the world expects from the United States. Both were reactive and piecemeal moves to counter multiple humiliations of America.
This has created a growing global perception of American weakness and indecisiveness that will embolden America’s enemies for the remainder of the Obama presidency and possibly beyond.
The first policy shift, announced in a speech by President Obama on September 10, 2014 in response to a series of ISIS beheadings, was supposed to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS. The president said this effort would include “a systematic campaign of airstrikes” in Iraq and Syria, training and equipping of moderate Syrian rebels, increased support to the Iraqi army and stepped up humanitarian assistance.
This rapid collapse of President Obama’s Syria-Iraq policy over the last few weeks has caused serious damage to American credibility.The failure of the September 2014 policy shift was obvious soon after it began. Pinprick airstrikes in Syria did not stop ISIS from making gains on the ground. In Iraq, ISIS took the city of Ramadi last May despite being outnumbered 10-1 by the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army and the Iraqi Kurds clamored for more arms while the Obama administration sat on its hands.
Obama’s 2014 policy shift suffered a spectacular collapse this fall when a failed $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels was cancelled and Russia intervened in Syria and began conducting airstrikes against anti-Assad rebels, many backed by the United States. Iran also stepped up its presence in Syria by sending troops who are fighting to prop up the Assad government.
This rapid collapse of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy over the last few weeks has caused serious damage to American credibility. Russian President Putin mocked and ignored President Obama as he sent Russian forces into Syria. An intelligence sharing agreement was signed between Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Iraqi lawmakers even called on Russia to conduct airstrikes against ISIS positions in their country.
The Obama administration responded to these setbacks with a new policy shift that looks even worse than the last one.
The president is sending “fewer than 50” special operations troops to help advise an alliance of Syrian Arab rebels. Given the lack of a clear policy and confusing rules of engagement, such a small deployment will be scoffed at by America’s adversaries and may be at risk of being captured. On Monday, President Obama made the preposterous claim that this deployment is consistent with his pledge of “no boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq because these troops will not be on the front lines fighting ISIS.
The New York Times reported on November 2 the Syrian Arab rebel alliance that U.S. special operations troops are supposed to be advising doesn’t yet exist and is dominated by Syrian Kurds who mostly want to carve out their own state and have little interest in fighting to take back Arab territory from ISIS. Moreover, American military support of the Syrian Kurds worries Turkey because of their close ties with the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group in Turkey.
The U.S. dropped 50 tons of weapons for the Arab alliance in late September. Although U.S. officials initially said Syrian Arabs and not Syrian Kurds were the recipients of the airdrop, according to the New York Times, Syrian Kurdish fighters had to retrieve these weapons because the Arab units for which they were intended did not have the logistical capability to move them.
Related Image
An
ISIS militant stands on a tank captured from Syrian government forces,
in the town of Qaryatain southwest of Palmyra, central Syria. (Photo
released Aug. 5, 2015 by Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated
with ISIS/via AP)
New U.S. demands that Assad step down make little sense due to increased Russian and Iranian support.
The first round of U.S.-brokered Syrian peace talks were held last week in Vienna. 17 nations participated, including, for the first time, Iran. The talks produced a vague communique endorsing a future cease-fire, a transitional government, a new constitution and elections in which Syrians would select a new government. However, it seems unlikely the Assad regime – which was excluded from the talks – or its Russian and Iranian backers will ever support free and fair elections.
Russia and Iran rejected a timeline proposed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the peace talks under which Assad would step down in four to six months and national elections would be held in 18 months. This puts a cease-fire out of reach since most Syrian rebels will not agree to a peace process that leaves Assad in power.
The Syria talks were overshadowed by the unwise decision by the Obama administration to include Iran because its presence legitimized its interference in Syria and Iraq. This also made the talks tumultuous due to open feuding between Iranian and Saudi officials. More talks are scheduled but Iranian officials have said they may not participate due to their differences with the Saudis.
So far, Mr. Obama has not agreed to Pentagon recommendations to back Iraqi forces with Apache helicopters or to allow U.S. military advisers to serve on the front lines with Iraqi forces. These proposals are still reportedly under consideration. Meanwhile, Republican congressmen continue to demand the Obama administration directly arm the Iraqi Kurds who are struggling to battle ISIS with inadequate and obsolete weapons.
America’s friends and allies know President Obama is pursuing a Syria/Iraq non-policy to run out the clock. They know Mr. Obama’s initiatives are not serious policies but minor gestures that allow the president to be seen as doing something now while also enabling him to claim after he leaves office that he did not put U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria nor did he get America into another war.
Alliances in the Middle East are already shifting because of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq non-policy. Russia is filling a power vacuum in the region and is building a new alliance with Iraq, Iran and Syria. Russia has improved its relations with Egypt and Israel. Although the Saudis are working with the Obama administration to arm moderate Syrian rebel fighters, Riyadh is frustrated that the U.S. is considering compromise solutions which could leave Assad in power. Saudi Arabia also reportedly is considering providing surface-to-air missiles to the Syrian rebels, a move the U.S. opposes since these missiles could fall into the hands of ISIS.
America’s enemies are certain to try to exploit the run-out-the-clock foreign policy that President Obama apparently plans to pursue for the remainder of his term in office. This could mean a surge in global provocations, terrorism and violence from North Korea to the South China Sea to Afghanistan and to the Middle East due to the disappearance of American leadership over the next 15 months.
Remember that the weakness and incompetence of President Clinton’s foreign policy emboldened Al Qaeda to step up terrorist attacks against U.S troops and led Osama bin Laden to believe that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks would drive the United States from the Middle East. With Barack Obama dithering away America’s global credibility, a catastrophic terrorist attack like 9/11 could happen again.
Carson’s war on Politico, CNN and the media: Has the scrutiny gone too far?
The topsy-turvy spectacle has been nothing short of bizarre: Ben Carson insisting he was an angry teenager who once tried to stab someone, while a media organization says he was a nice kid.
And yet that prompted the presidential candidate to denounce CNN for peddling “garbage” that he dismissed as a “smear.”
A day later, Carson accused Politico of an “outright lie” for reporting that he had falsely claimed in his autobiography to have been offered a full scholarship to West Point.
Carson seems deeply offended that journalists are digging into his past and challenging his veracity, though that’s standard procedure in presidential campaigns. At the same time, he’s scoring points against the unpopular media, which have overreached at times in digging into the doctor’s past.
These biographical details may matter more to Carson than to most candidates, since his inspiring life story—from an impoverished childhood with a single mother to world-class neurosurgeon—is the bedrock foundation of his campaign.
The irony is that Carson’s quiet dignity and low-key temperament are a major source of his appeal. But in denouncing the media in recent days, he looks downright angry.
What CNN set out to do by talking to old friends and neighbors was not a smear. The network never accused Carson of lying, but reported that nine people interviewed had said violent outbursts would seem utterly out of character for him.
But the clear implication was that Carson had perhaps been exaggerating the stabbing incident and another in which he said he almost hit his mother with a hammer. The network didn’t have the goods and probably should have held the piece for more reporting.
The story prompted Carson to acknowledge to Megyn Kelly that the person he tried to stab was not a friend, as he said in his autobiography, using a phony name, but a close relative. And then he had an epic on-air battle with CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota, insisting with some justification that the people the network interviewed would have no way of knowing about violent incidents in his past.
The next day came the screaming Politico headline that Carson had admitted fabricating a story about West Point. This was way overstated, which was underscored when the website greatly softened the headline.
Carson told Bill O’Reilly that he was not in fact offered a scholarship to West Point, but was told he’d have an “easy” time if he applied. And applying—all cadets attend free—is a complicated process that requires sponsorship by a member of Congress or secretary of the Army.
The Wall Street Journal joined the fray over the weekend, questioning, among other things, an anecdote in which Carson says when his fellow black high school students erupted in anger after the murder of Martin Luther King, “he protected a few white students from the attacks by hiding them.” But the paper could not prove it didn’t happen.
These distinctions and discrepancies undoubtedly seem miniscule to Carson’s fans, who have pushed him into a neck-and-neck competition with Donald Trump in national polls. The same goes for the flaps over what Carson has said about the Pyramids, Nazi Germany and other off-topic subjects.
A more experienced politician would be accustomed to the scrapes and scratches inflicted by media scrutiny. Of course, Ben Carson prides himself on not being a politician.
When I spoke with him at length last spring, Carson said he considered the media to be biased, but seemed rather Zen about it. Now he seems appalled, as he made clear at a contentious Florida news conference on Friday.
For most people, relitigating what happened 50 years ago, when Carson was a teenager, seems like overkill. And there was a telling moment yesterday on “Meet the Press”: Asked whether his mother (who Carson says he almost hit with a hammer) couldn’t come forward to clarify some of these incidents, the candidate said: “My mother has Alzheimer’s.” That put things in perspective.
But whether the scrutiny is reasonable or overzealous, Carson should recognize that this is the price of admission for the people who want to be president.
Egypt investigators '90 percent sure' bomb brought down Russian aircraft, report says
A member of the Egyptian team investigating the deadly crash of a Russian passenger jet in the Sinai Peninsula has been quoted as saying that he and his colleagues are "90 percent sure" the plane was brought down by a bomb.
Reuters, which reported the unnamed team member's comments, said he had asked not to be named due to "sensitivities."
"The indications and analysis so far of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb," the investigator added. His comments are the first reported acknowledgement from anyone connected with the investigation that the Airbus A321-200 was the target of an attack.
Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed on Oct. 31, 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport. All 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacationers returning to their homes, were killed.
Over the course of the past week, U.S. and U.K. investigators, relying on intercepted communications and other intelligence, have suggested that a bomb carried out by Islamist militants was the likely cause of the disaster. However, Russian and Egyptian authorities initially dismissed claims of responsibility by the ISIS terror group before publicly insisted that other possible causes could not be ruled out.
Britain and several airlines have stopped normally scheduled flights to the Red Sea resort city, while Russia has suspended all flights to Egypt because of security concerns. British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond told the BBC on Sunday that if the bomb is confirmed, it will require a potential rethinking of airport security in all areas where the extremist group is active.
Meanwhile, the first of three teams of Russian inspectors was dispatched to the country to examine airport security. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich did not give details on what specific security issues the inspections teams would be examining. Dvorkovich said that 11,000 Russians were flown home from Egypt on Saturday and an even larger number were expected to leave Sunday, according to Russian news agencies.
Egyptian airport and security officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that authorities were questioning airport staff and ground crew who worked on the plane and had placed some employees under surveillance. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Security officials at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport have told The Associated Press that the facility has long had gaps in security, including a key baggage scanning device that often is not functioning and lax searches at an entry gate for food and fuel for the planes. One security official said drugs and weapons slip through security checks at the airport because poorly paid policemen monitoring X-ray machines can be bribed.
A spokesman for Egypt's Aviation Ministry, Mohamed Rahma, dismissed the accounts of inadequate security, saying "Sharm el-Sheikh is one of the safest airports in the world," without elaborating.
Egyptian authorities have bristled at the allegations of lax security, with some blaming an anti-Egypt bias in the foreign media. Those sensitivities were on display Sunday as foreign camera crews were prevented from filming inside the Sharm el-Sheikh airport, along the city's main tourist strip in Naama Bay, or in other public spaces.
Despite strong government denials, the suggestions of a major security breach at Sharm el-Sheikh airport have gained traction among some Egyptians. On Saturday an Associated Press reporter at Cairo airport witnessed several passengers yelling at security personnel to pay more attention to the X-ray scanner, with one man repeatedly shouting, "This is what happened in Sharm!"
In Russia, more than a thousand mourners packed into the landmark St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg for a memorial service for the victims. Attendees lit candles and stood in silence as the cathedral bells rang 224 times to remember each victim.
"We came to the service today with all our family to support the people in our common grief," said Galina Stepanova, 58.
Stepanova said she believed the plane was downed by a bomb, but said that Russia should continue its airstrike campaign against the Islamic State group and other insurgents in Syria.
"We have a rightful cause to help Syria in its fight against terrorism," she said.
Mikhail Vishnyakov, a 42-year-old sales manager who attended the service with his family, said he did not want to rush to conclusions about the cause of the plane crash until the investigation was complete.
"If it was a terrorist act, I don't think it was directed exactly against Russia. It could well be directed against any other plane of any other country. It was for a good reason that other countries began to take their tourists from Egypt," Vishnyakov said.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Cruz, Huckabee, Jindal preach conservative principles
Passionately professing that the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage must be overturned
and laying out their conservative credentials, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz,
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
pulpiteered to over 1,700 conservative Christians in Des Moines, Iowa,
Friday for a two-day National Religious Liberties Conference.
Before hearing from the presidential contenders, evangelical families collected name tags, perused a table filled with books like "What does the Bible Say About That: A Biblical Worldview Curriculum for Children" and connected with other like-minded conservatives. In the dimly lit hall, Kevin Sawnson, executive director of Generations, which was hosting the event, set the tone in describing same-sex marriage as a "significant cosmic revolution against almighty God."
"Some of our leaders are encouraging civil disobedience. Some of the most significant religious leaders in this country are looking you straight in the eye, and they are telling you, you disobey the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the supreme law-giver of all this universe, and that is God. Well, friends, this is a wake-up call from the church," Swanson said. "I believe God is telling you are going to be persecuted. Either you are going stand with me or you are coming down with the rest of them."
When Cruz took the stage, he didn't hesitate in diving into how religion and government should be connected.
"Any president that doesn't start the day on his knees isn't fit to be commander in chief," Cruz passionately said.
Jindal pushed forth a similar message -- ardently citing the need for a religious revival in the U.S. He started off his 10 minutes on stage saying that the left is trying to take away First Amendment religious liberty rights. For this reason, Jindal told the room that 2016 will be "the most important election of our lifetime" and moved on to tout his own conservative record.
Huckabee, also diving head on into the social issues, said that same-sex marriage "is not law." He then moved quickly onto abortion, citing one prime question that has yet to be resolved: "Is the unborn child a person? Or just a blob of tissue?" From there, he pressed Republicans to force the left to defend themselves on what he called the right to kill a baby.
But for many in attendance, it was not so much the candidates that they were there to see -- it was, rather, the conference's doctrine that they were there to support.
Asked if a few young men sporting red Cruz stickers were there to see the senator, Johan Gervais, a 25-year-old from Texas, said, "Well, we are here for the religious liberty conference." He had driven to the conference with seven of his evangelical friends and happily noted that Cruz is their senator.
But Cruz was a favorite in the room. "We like him," said Graham Featherston, one of Gervais' fellow roadtrippers from Austin. Featherston is only 15 but said that if he could vote he would vote for Cruz. The group drove over 14 hours to attend the conference and knew a group of four girls who had also made the trek.
Generations, the conference's host, is based in Colorado Springs and decided to host the conference in Iowa because this is its first political convention. It seemed "pivotal" to be in the state that first voices its opinion in the primary process, said one person who works at Generations.
That said, out-of-towners were not an anomaly. Of the 1,700 attendees, only 387 were from Iowa.
Etsu Van Slooten, from Wisconsin, was there with her five children and her husband. Born in Japan, she went to college in the U.S. to study social work and immediately started working at Head Start, the federal program that promotes early childhood education for low-income families. But she soon realized that she needed to change her professions and devote herself more ardently to religion.
"I felt like I was helping people go to hell," Van Slooten said. "I wanted to work for something that makes a difference for a human being. So I went back to mission work for something that would give light."
Pushing her stroller, Van Slooten said that she, like many others at the conference, was a homeschooler.
Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz's father, took to the stage later in the evening for about an hour and made a pitch to the homeschooling families in the room, telling them that the government does not want parents helping kids with their homework because it brainwashes them.
Talking to reporters after his speech, the younger Cruz specifically addressed the relationship between him and his father, an immigrant from Cuba who he considers his hero.
"He is someone who I have admired my entire life because he knows what he believes and he stands up and tells the truth," Cruz said. "What a blessing to be a child of an immigrant who fled oppression. It makes you realize just how precious and fragile liberty is."
Huckabee said religious liberty should be applied to all religious perspectives.
"We should protect the rights of an atheist, to believe that there is no God, as much as we should protect the rights that I have to believe that Jesus Christ is God," Huckabee told reporters.
Cruz and his father pressed home the need for voting momentum and action, urging people to get out and vote.
"If another 10 million evangelical Christians vote in 2016 and simply vote our values, we won't be up at 3 in the morning wondering what happened in Ohio and Florida," Cruz said. "They'll call the election at 8:35 p.m. because Christians would have turned this country around."
His father also urgently pressed evangelicals to get to the polls in order to fight back against "Christians being singled out."
"God didn't put Obama in power. We did! By sitting on our rear ends," the elder Cruz said. "Make sure everyone understands that voting is our civic responsibility."
Before leaving the stage, after almost an hourlong speech, he made the pitch that his son was the best choice. He described him as a leader, a fighter and the "man of the hour."
"Rafael for vice president!" an audience member shrieked as he walked off the stage.
Before hearing from the presidential contenders, evangelical families collected name tags, perused a table filled with books like "What does the Bible Say About That: A Biblical Worldview Curriculum for Children" and connected with other like-minded conservatives. In the dimly lit hall, Kevin Sawnson, executive director of Generations, which was hosting the event, set the tone in describing same-sex marriage as a "significant cosmic revolution against almighty God."
"Some of our leaders are encouraging civil disobedience. Some of the most significant religious leaders in this country are looking you straight in the eye, and they are telling you, you disobey the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the supreme law-giver of all this universe, and that is God. Well, friends, this is a wake-up call from the church," Swanson said. "I believe God is telling you are going to be persecuted. Either you are going stand with me or you are coming down with the rest of them."
When Cruz took the stage, he didn't hesitate in diving into how religion and government should be connected.
"Any president that doesn't start the day on his knees isn't fit to be commander in chief," Cruz passionately said.
Jindal pushed forth a similar message -- ardently citing the need for a religious revival in the U.S. He started off his 10 minutes on stage saying that the left is trying to take away First Amendment religious liberty rights. For this reason, Jindal told the room that 2016 will be "the most important election of our lifetime" and moved on to tout his own conservative record.
Huckabee, also diving head on into the social issues, said that same-sex marriage "is not law." He then moved quickly onto abortion, citing one prime question that has yet to be resolved: "Is the unborn child a person? Or just a blob of tissue?" From there, he pressed Republicans to force the left to defend themselves on what he called the right to kill a baby.
But for many in attendance, it was not so much the candidates that they were there to see -- it was, rather, the conference's doctrine that they were there to support.
Asked if a few young men sporting red Cruz stickers were there to see the senator, Johan Gervais, a 25-year-old from Texas, said, "Well, we are here for the religious liberty conference." He had driven to the conference with seven of his evangelical friends and happily noted that Cruz is their senator.
But Cruz was a favorite in the room. "We like him," said Graham Featherston, one of Gervais' fellow roadtrippers from Austin. Featherston is only 15 but said that if he could vote he would vote for Cruz. The group drove over 14 hours to attend the conference and knew a group of four girls who had also made the trek.
Generations, the conference's host, is based in Colorado Springs and decided to host the conference in Iowa because this is its first political convention. It seemed "pivotal" to be in the state that first voices its opinion in the primary process, said one person who works at Generations.
That said, out-of-towners were not an anomaly. Of the 1,700 attendees, only 387 were from Iowa.
Etsu Van Slooten, from Wisconsin, was there with her five children and her husband. Born in Japan, she went to college in the U.S. to study social work and immediately started working at Head Start, the federal program that promotes early childhood education for low-income families. But she soon realized that she needed to change her professions and devote herself more ardently to religion.
"I felt like I was helping people go to hell," Van Slooten said. "I wanted to work for something that makes a difference for a human being. So I went back to mission work for something that would give light."
Pushing her stroller, Van Slooten said that she, like many others at the conference, was a homeschooler.
Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz's father, took to the stage later in the evening for about an hour and made a pitch to the homeschooling families in the room, telling them that the government does not want parents helping kids with their homework because it brainwashes them.
Talking to reporters after his speech, the younger Cruz specifically addressed the relationship between him and his father, an immigrant from Cuba who he considers his hero.
"He is someone who I have admired my entire life because he knows what he believes and he stands up and tells the truth," Cruz said. "What a blessing to be a child of an immigrant who fled oppression. It makes you realize just how precious and fragile liberty is."
Huckabee said religious liberty should be applied to all religious perspectives.
"We should protect the rights of an atheist, to believe that there is no God, as much as we should protect the rights that I have to believe that Jesus Christ is God," Huckabee told reporters.
Cruz and his father pressed home the need for voting momentum and action, urging people to get out and vote.
"If another 10 million evangelical Christians vote in 2016 and simply vote our values, we won't be up at 3 in the morning wondering what happened in Ohio and Florida," Cruz said. "They'll call the election at 8:35 p.m. because Christians would have turned this country around."
His father also urgently pressed evangelicals to get to the polls in order to fight back against "Christians being singled out."
"God didn't put Obama in power. We did! By sitting on our rear ends," the elder Cruz said. "Make sure everyone understands that voting is our civic responsibility."
Before leaving the stage, after almost an hourlong speech, he made the pitch that his son was the best choice. He described him as a leader, a fighter and the "man of the hour."
"Rafael for vice president!" an audience member shrieked as he walked off the stage.
Pentagon to release Guantanamo detainee relocation plan, as Obama pressed ahead with closure
The Pentagon is expected to release a plan next week on President Obama’s years-long effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center that suggests a Colorado prison dubbed “the Alcatraz of the Rockies” as one suitable site to relocate expected life-long detainees, Obama administration officials say.
Obama made a campaign promise in his 2008 White House bid to close the facility, arguing the move would be in the United States’ best financial, national security and foreign policy interests and in the name of justice -- considering some of the detainees have been held for nearly nine years without trial or sentencing.
However, critics of the promise, including many Republicans, fear transferring detainees to the U.S. mainland as part of an overall closure plan poses too much of a homeland security risk. They also say the president has yet to submit a closure plan and have been critical of the administration recently allowing some known terrorists to return to the Middle East.
The Florence, Colo., prison is among seven U.S. facilities in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina being considered.
The Pentagon plan represents a last-gasp effort by the administration to convince staunch opponents in Congress that dangerous detainees who can't be transferred safely to other countries should be housed in a U.S.-based prison.
The United States opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to get suspected terrorists off the battlefield.
Congressional Republicans have been able to stop Obama from closing the facility by imposing financial and other restrictions.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this week that the administration is trying “very hard” to transfer 53 more detainees, among the 112 remaining, before the end of the year.
The rest are either facing trial by military commission or the government has determined that they are too dangerous to release but are not facing charges.
Any decision to select a U.S. facility would require congressional approval -- something U.S. lawmakers say is unlikely. However, Earnest also suggested that Obama has not ruled out the possibility of using an executive order to close the facility.
The Pentagon plan makes no recommendations on which of the seven sites is preferred and provides no rankings, according to administration officials.
A Pentagon assessment team reviewed the sites in recent months and detailed their advantages and disadvantages. They include locations, costs for renovations and construction, the ability to house troops and hold military commission hearings, and health care facilities.
Colorado's Centennial Correctional Facility has advantages that could outweigh its disadvantages, according to officials. But no details were available and no conclusions have been reached. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The Florence, Colo., facility already holds convicted terrorists, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the conspirators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
To approve a transfer, Defense Secretary Ash Carter must conclude that the detainees will not return to terrorism or the battlefield upon release and that there is a host country willing to take them and guarantee they will secure them.
Arizona Sen. John McCain is among the congressional Republicans who have asked for an administration plan for the shutdown of Guantanamo. And the Pentagon's assessment team visits over the last few months were part of the effort to provide options for the relocation of Guantanamo detainees.
"I've asked for six and a half years for this administration to come forward with a plan -- a plan that we could implement in order to close Guantanamo. They have never come forward with one and it would have to be approved by Congress," McCain said this week.
The facilities reviewed by the assessment team were the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Midwest Joint Regional Corrections Facility at Leavenworth, Kansas; the Consolidated Naval Brig, Charleston, South Carolina; the Federal Correctional Complex, which includes the medium, maximum and supermax facilities in Florence, Colorado; and the Colorado State Penitentiary II in Canon City, Colorado, also known as the Centennial Correctional Facility.
Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner made clear this week that he opposes any move to relocate detainees to his state.
"I will not sit idly by while the president uses political promises to imperil the people of Colorado by moving enemy combatants from Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, to my state of Colorado," he said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
He also expressed concerns about the potential impact of such a move on the state’s judicial system and concerns about detainees potentially have to transported from the rural facility to downtown Denver to the federal courthouse for a hearing.
McCain and others have said that an executive order to shutter Guantanamo would face fierce opposition, including efforts to reverse the decision through funding mechanisms.
The prison at Guantanamo presents a particularly confrontational replay of that strategy. Obama would likely have to argue that the restrictions imposed by Congress are unconstitutional, though he has abided by them for years. The dispute could set off a late-term legal battle with Republicans in Congress over executive power, potentially in the height of a presidential campaign.
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Trump arrived at the secretary of state’s office Wednesday morning surrounded by supporters and reporters following the candidate’s movements at the state capitol.
"This may be a very, very important signature or maybe not so important, we'll have to see what happens,” Trump told the press as he signed the paperwork.
Like other candidates, Trump was able to write a campaign slogan on the form to show he signed up for the February contest. “’Make America Great Again’- that's what we're going to do!"
Afterwards, Trump joined local and national media to discuss his latest take on 2016 politics.
The candidate announced he’s launching a pair of radio ads in early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina this week. He hinted that television ads were soon to follow.
He also used a familiar attack on two of his Republican rivals. “Jeb is low energy, Ben Carson is super low energy, he falls asleep every time he gets in a car!”