Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

You're wrong, again __ January 22, 2009: Freshly inaugurated President Obama signs an executive order to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility within one year. He says the action is meant to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism." In the summer of 2009, he grants a six-month extension to the Guantánamo closing commission.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/guantanamo.order/index.html?_s=PM:POLITICS

December 15, 2009: The President tells federal authorities to acquire a prison in Thompson, Illinois as Guantánamo's replacement. The idea is to transfer Gitmo prisoners to this super-maximum security facilites and shut down the controversial Cuban prison. Not-in-my-backyard rage and fear over terrorists within U.S. borders ensues.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2009/12/transfer-of-gitmo-detainees-to-illinois-prison-brings-panic-relief/26111/
AND - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/us/16gitmo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

May 19, 2010: The House Armed Services Committee rejects the Obama administration's plan to bring Guantánamo detainees into domestic prisons by approving legislation that prohibits detention centers inside the U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/us/16gitmo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
AND - http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2009/12/transfer-of-gitmo-detainees-to-illinois-prison-brings-panic-relief/26111/

March 7, 2011?: President Obama signs another executive order, this one focussed on creating a review process for detainees. The goal is to "establish, as a discretionary matter, a process to review on a periodic basis the executive branch's continued, discretionary exercise of existing detention authority in individual cases." In the same breath, he re-institutes military tribunals for detainees.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Executive_Order_on_Periodic_Review.pdf/

April 23, 2011: The plan to prosecute September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court falls apart, with Attorney General Eric Holder informing the president that KSM would be returned to Guantánamo Bay for trial. A report in The Washington Post claims this move will "mark the effective abandonment of the president's promise to close the military detention center."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/04/how-white-house-lost-fight-close-guantanamo-bay/36973/

Septemberg 29, 2012: The last westerner held at Guantánamo, Omar Khadr, is sent back to Canada after serving eight years for murder in violation of the law of war and other charges.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/last-westerner-leaves-guantanamo-canada/57430/

January 28, 2013: The State Department shuts down the office of the envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

May 30, 2013 | 12:50 a.m: Little has changed politically since the last time Congress rebuffed the president.

The last time President Obama tried to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Congress stopped him abruptly. The Senate did what it rarely does: It voted in bipartisan fashion, blocking his attempt at funding the closure.

Four years later, and the political barriers that blocked the president from closing the camp that now houses 166 detainees are as immovable as ever. Moving the prisoners to facilities in the U.S., a solution the administration suggested, proved to be a political minefield in 2009. Most Americans oppose closing the base, according to a polls, and congressional leaders have balked at taking action.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/political-barriers-stand-between-obama-and-closing-guantanamo-facility-20130503