Gitmo prison dispute may hold up war funding - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Gitmo prison dispute may hold up war funding

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is warning that passing a war funding bill won’t be easy because the Obama administration wants the legislation to include money to shut down the detainee camp at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The $83.4 billion supplemental spending bill was awaiting review by lawmakers when they returned to work Monday from a two-week break.

No firm deadline has been announced for when the Defense Department needs the money, but congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expect the services to issue warnings that they will have difficulty covering war-related expenses without taking money away from other programs if Congress doesn’t act by the Fourth of July congressional recess.

Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of U.S. Central Command, is scheduled to meet Wednesday with lawmakers in a closed-door session to go over details of the bill, which includes $75.5 billion in a second installment on war funding for this year. The House Appropriations Committee could begin writing its version of the bill as early as next week.

There is not much controversy about the $22.9 billion in the bill for equipment-related issues — including $11.6 billion for repairs or replacement of lost, damaged or worn out gear and weapons, $9.8 billion for equipment improvements and $1.5 billion for continued efforts to defend against improvised explosive devices.

The bill also contains $3.1 billion for intelligence programs, $5.4 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan stability, and $7.1 billion for foreign aid.

McConnell said asking for $80 million in the bill to close the Guantanamo Bay prison — $50 million for moving the detainees and $30 million for administrative and support costs — will work against quick passage of the legislation, especially because the administration has not announced what it plans to do with the more than 200 detainees.

Many bills have been introduced in Congress seeking to block detainees from being transferred to military or federal prisons in the states or congressional districts of the sponsors, leaving a legislative minefield to be crossed before the war supplemental could be passed with the Guantanamo Bay provisions attached.

McConnell said Republicans want to support the supplemental, but that doesn’t mean they will support unrelated programs attached to the bill.

“The president’s war funding request should be used for its intended purpose — national defense,” he said.

Closing the prison in Cuba and transferring the inmates seems aimed more at opinion outside the U.S. than inside, McConnell said.

“The administration sought to nullify critics overseas by saying that it will transfer the inmates at Guantanamo in a matter of months,” McConnell said. “The administration should assure the American people these inmates will not be transferred to American soil nor allowed to return to the battlefield, an assurance that so far the new administration has not been able to give.”

The Justice Department is reviewing the cases of detainees to decide whether they should be released or transferred.

President Barack Obama said in a March interview with regional news reporters — including one who asked if any of the detainees would end up at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. — that no decision had been made, but that some detainees would have to be imprisoned somewhere.

“Recognize that these individuals who have been imprisoned, many of who are very violent and are pledging violence against the United States, once captured, are similar to criminals who have engaged in violence of other types,” Obama said. “They are a serious risk but so are many of the people who are currently in prison. We would never put people into a situation that elevated the risks for surrounding communities, and that will obviously be something that we take very seriously as we are making these decisions moving forward.”

Obama said housing terrorists in federal prison, though, is not something new. “We already have experience with terrorists who are in federal prisons, and there has been no indication that the safety and security of prison guards or the surrounding communities have been compromised as a consequence,” he said.

The sharp differences between the remarks of McConnell and Obama highlight the difficulty ahead in reaching a compromise.

The $83.4 billion supplemental would come on top of $65.9 billion already provided to the Defense Department to cover Iraq and Afghanistan expenses for the current fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30.