Guantanamo Bay

Obama has announced that he plans to shut down Guantanamo bay, permanently. He promised he would do this as one of his first acts in office.  Seven years later, he will finally present a plan, despite skepticism from his own party, in his last days as president.  

The White house will present a plan to Congress outlining the administration’s strategy for closing the detention facility for enemy combatants.  Disclosure of the plan is bound to meet stiff resistance from Republicans.  The broad outlines of the plan have been known for months, and the White House has said the final product will not contain many surprises in terms of the closure strategy.  The blueprint involves transferring the bulk of remaining detainees to other countries and moving the rest, who can’t be transferred abroad because they are deemed too dangerous, to a detention facility in the United States that has still not been determined.  

Obama says that the prison, which holds suspected members of terrorist groups captures overseas, is a recruiting tool for terrorists and is too costly to maintain.  The number of detainees has dropped to 91 inmates during Obama’s time at the White House.  While there are only 91 detainees in the prison, there are approximately 2,000 military and civilian personnel assigned to the prison and the facility costs hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain.  

It looks like Obama is finally following through on the promise he made seven years ago at the start of his term.  It is an end of an era to see the famous Guantanamo Bay begin to be shut down.