Op-ed: 
On Closing Gitmo 
By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on http://americanpbn.com/

"These detainees cannot come to American soil." 
- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on hearing Obama's plan to close Gitmo

Earlier this week Barack HUSSEIN Obama tried to make good on one of his long ago campaign promises...a promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility (Gitmo) before the end of his presidency...which by the way cannot come soon enough.

And in his reality of wanting to bring convicted terrorists onto U.S. soil as well as releasing terrorists to terrorist condoning countries where they will make their way back onto the battlefield and kill more innocents, Obama had the gall to say that the Gitmo issue had cost him “countless hours of consternation” as he once again blamed George W. Bush for all his woes. Saying it was what Bush did that forced him to apologize on the world stage for an approach to terrorism that he never supported, Obama tried to convince Congress that by his emptying Gitmo our country would move past what he called “a troubled era of wartime behavior,” and would close a chapter in our history as "It undermines our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law."

Presenting what he called a 'blueprint'...actually a 9-page 'so-called' strategy' you can see here: http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documen... proved once again that not only are his intentions misplaced, but that they have crossed over into outright treason. And how so...with actions that 'aid and abet' the enemy and put the American people in danger.

See a transcript of Obama's remarks in full here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off... and see him say those words here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVt9Jb3KYYg

Briefly, this is what Obama...who called the closing of Gitmo a “bipartisan moral imperative”...is proposing. Now with 91 detainees still being held at Gitmo, the Parole Review Board, the board responsible for determining which detainee is suitable for transfer, will be working to have the 35 detainees who have been cleared for release to a 'third country' fast-tracked over the next couple of months; and with another 46 being deemed too dangerous to transfer overseas coupled with the remaining 10 being charged or convicted in the military commissions system...Obama wants to bring these worst of the worst to one of 13 still unnamed high-security prisons inside these United States...saying it would save as much as $85 million a year by moving them here.

Better to save dollars than be concerned about the harm these enemy combatants can do if they ever escaped...par for the course for the man who himself is an enemy combatant...the enemy within who never explained why moving said detainees to U.S. soil reduces our standing in the world.

So maybe now that you know what Obama is planning on doing you can see that the only stain on Obama's above mentioned rule of law is Obama himself for this most miserable of presidents plans to bring to our country those he knows will indeed pose a threat to our populace. In other words, the man who swore to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the American people now wants to deliberately put American lives in danger because it would be too dangerous to send the worst of the worst to the countries of his brethren...if that's not treason...if that's not 'aiding and abetting' the enemy...I don't know what is.

“Not only are we not going to close Guantánamo, when I am president, if we capture a terrorist alive, they are not getting a court hearing in Manhattan. They are not going to be sent to Nevada...They are going to Guantánamo, and we are going to find out everything they know.”
- Presidential candidate Marco Rubio

Treason...yet the fact remains that in this, an extremely contentious election year where the issue of national security remains the prime concern for most Americans, hopefully, our Republican-controlled Congress will not allow the Obama White House the cooperation needed to send detainees to our soil. In fact, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has said that any effort by this administration to unilaterally...via his pen and his phone...close Gitmo without congressional approval would be a direct violation of U.S. law as Obama does not have the authority under the Constitution to transfer prisoners on his own.

“[The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,” Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution, also known as the War Powers Clause, says it all with the single word 'Congress.' Breaking it down further to the words, “make rules concerning captures on land and water,” again shows that said power in relation to the transfer of any prisoners is invested in the Congress not in the president. Simply, this means that Obama does not have the legal right to release these 'captures,' and by the way, nor are they entitled to any constitutional rights or legal proceedings to try and prove otherwise. In fact, in a 1952 opinion in the case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson determined that a president is on the 'weakest constitutional footing' when acting against Congress's will.

Remember, too, that Congress voted overwhelmingly for the 'National Defense Authorization Act' which contains a provision that clearly states that the president may not move Gitmo inmates to U.S. soil...period. In fact, as per the words of speaker Ryan, “...if the president proceeds with knowingly breaking the law and asking the military to break the law, he will be met with fierce bipartisan opposition here in Congress, and we're taking all legal preparations necessary to meet with that resistance.”

And rest assured that there will indeed be bipartisan resistance to Obama's plans as it was the Democrats not the Republicans who wrote the above said bill and got it passed when they were in control of Congress. And the Republican-controlled House and Senate will surely reject it as dangerous to national security at a time when islamic terrorism is at a worldwide all time high...that is if Congress grows a backbone...and know that there appears to be enough votes to not only block Obama's plan in Congress, but also enough votes to override any veto. Also, the GOP is, according to Speaker Ryan, "preparing our legal challenge" to ensure that the prison remains open and that the detainees are not now or ever moved to our homeland.

But that still leaves Obama's infamous 'pen and phone' to executive order in the closing of Gitmo and the transferring of prisoners, never mind what Congress or 'We the People' want. And with this being a presidential election year, Obama will do anything needed for both political expediency and legacy building, and once again the Constitution be damned.

Now the question is does Obama via his commander-and-chief powers have unilateral authority to close Gitmo on his own? According to professor of political science at SUNY Cortland, Robert J. Spitzer, in referring to congressional funding restrictions aimed at preventing Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to the U.S....legislation that was signed by Obama..."The answer is no, as long as Congress has acted affirmatively to prevent him from doing that, as it has in this case."

But with Obama thinking himself king, he could very well try to close Gitmo via an executive order which would force this matter into federal court. And so the man who thinks he can just circumnavigate laws he finds inconvenient...the man who thinks himself above the very rule of law...above the Constitution...now finds himself facing the end of his tenure without the closing of Gitmo to add to his legacy...and hopefully it will stay that way.

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Today, Saturday, February 27th, from 11am to 1pm EST, Right Side Patriots Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss Why Trump?, Closing Gitmo, and give their take on the winners and losers from Thursday's Republican presidential debate.

Tune in at: americanpbn.com
And chat with us live at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cprworldwidemedia/?fref=ts

Op-ed: 
Mission accomplished...Obama style
By: Diane Sori

“Every person who served in Iraq or Afghanistan never loses that part of them when they come home. It becomes part of their soul.”- former three-star General Mark Hertling

Sometimes reality is cruel but sometimes reality stares us in the face and forces us to face facts, and one of those facts is that it's time we accept...liberal rhetoric aside...that we indeed are at war with islam...all islam...and that thanks to the "absence of conviction" of Barack HUSSEIN Obama we have sadly lost Iraq, as the sustained peace our soldiers fought and died for has NOT come to pass.

When George W. Bush left office the tangible physical war in Iraq had been won so to speak, but now 4,486 American troops have returned home in coffins, three quarters of them killed on Obama's watch. And thanks to Obama, in his role as Commander-in-Chief, forcing our troops to fight politically correct battles for "the hearts and minds" of the enemy instead of fighting those battles to win, there was a major resurgence in violence over this past year across the western province of Anbar, resulting in the black flag of al-Qaeda now flying over government buildings in Fallujah. And as the jihadists declare an Islamic state in a city in one of the most critical areas we fought hard to secure and temper down before Obama's telling the enemy...telling the world...when exactly American forces would be leaving became reality....seeing that flag symbolically stained with the blood of our American heroes flying in victory, sadly proclaims for all to see that our fighting and our dying was for naught.

And it took Obama just five years to lose all the gains we had made in Iraq...for Obama NOT only lost the war...or what he calls 'an overseas contingency'...but he sold out the peace...for that simple black al-Qaeda flag announces to the world the total failure of his policies in Iraq.

And it announces NOT just defeat but now his actions...or lack thereof...spits on the graves of the 3000+ Americans lost on September 11th when that very same al-Qaeda changed America forever. America's enemy...the one's Obama claimed were "decimated and on the run"...were anything but for as they regrouped and grew stronger Barack HUSSEIN Obama...America's very own 'enemy within'... looked away for our enemy is his friend...a friend he gave the chance to just wait it out until we left and then take back what American blood had been spilled for.

And now some are saying...and maybe rightly so...that the war in Iraq was possibly the biggest waste of American lives, American money, and American time in our nation's history. And when you compare Iraq to the aftermath of World War II there is some credence to what those folks are saying.

Remember, when Japan and Germany were occupied after the war the rules we set for the occupation were strictly enforced and the occupation lasted for years, which gave those countries time to restructure themselves to become successful modern nations, something we did NOT do in Iraq or for that fact we are NOT doing now in Afghanistan.

But thanks to the Obama liberals, to the leftists, to the kumbaya Democrats who dared NOT step on muslim toes, all we did when Obama sold us and the Iraqi people out was leave behind arms, equipment, and training programs so that the locals could create a viable fighting force, but we did NOT leave people there to train them, and so now all those arms and equipment are rotting across the landscape of Iraq.

And so what we hoped to win, we actually were destined to lose.

And the very basis for our being destined to lose...besides having a traitor sitting in the White House...is because it was NEVER admitted to...at least NOT publicly...that we are indeed at war with islam for if you do NOT recognize who the enemy is how can you be victorious over them. And like I said in the beginning of this piece we are most assuredly at war with ALL of islam for those who simply follow the tenets of islam cannot be separated from those who commit unspeakable acts in the name of islam. And America's Judeo-Christian mindset cannot fathom nor understand the vileness of those whose very so-called holy book (the qur'an) commands them to kill all who do NOT believe as they do. And it's our total awe of that very unspeakable understanding that prevents us from doing what we all know needs to be done and accepting the fact that our Judeo-Christian America...a nation whose very ideals, values, morals, and beliefs were founded upon the word of the one true living God of the Christians and Jews...can NEVER co-exist in peace with those who relish and welcome death over life.

So sadly, something deep in our hearts we knew was coming but dared NOT speak of, al-Qaeda flags now fly over both Fallujah and Ramadi. And for those who fought the good fight...for those who came home damaged in body and mind...that reality is hard to accept as it should be.

“It brings back a lot of anger,” said U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Paul, who served in the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. “I feel like it’s been a big waste of time. It’s kind of like, why the hell did all my buddies die there for."

And how right he is for because of Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his misguided allegiances and policies we have lost Iraq...and probably will lose Afghanistan too...as our brave troops are NOT returning home as the victors they should be but as those in defeat...and that is something that this most miserable of presidents must be both called to task for and made to answer for...period.