President Obama gave Candy Crowley an interview on her last CNN State of the Union show today. In the interview, he vowed to do everything he could to close Guantanamo despite opposition from Republicans and BlueDog Democrats in Congress.
McCain insisted he "always wanted to close Guantanamo, but I wanted to transfer those prisoners to maximum security prisons, prisons in the United States of America." He went on to claim that President Obama never had a plan for that.
McCain paid a lot of lip service to restoring habeas corpus to the Gitmo prisoners, but when the vote was taken, he voted against it.
But the real lie is the one where he claims the President had no plan to transfer prisoners. That's an outright lie. The plan was to repatriate some of them and to transfer some to prisons in the United States.
It was Congress who de-funded that. Not the President. In fact, as President Obama stated in his interview, one of the reasons to close Gitmo is the cost to maintain prisoners in that environment. But transfer to US prisons requires Congress, and Congress flatly refused, as they continue to do.
McCain continues to say he "wants" to close Gitmo and restore habeas corpus to the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, but his votes don't back his words, and he flat-out lied about what the White House did and didn't do.
I now have another nominee for my Sunday Show Lying Liar of the Week. There may yet still be more.
