“On this day in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that called for the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to be closed within a year. A month later, in his first State of the Union address, the president told Americans he had ordered the closure of the controversial camp in Cuba, and “will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists.”
Guantanamo, which remains open, has not been mentioned in the president’s annual speech since.
The proposed road to closure has been arduous and slow. In December 2009, Obama signed a presidential memorandum ordering Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to acquire an Illinois state prison, which would serve as a replacement for Guantanamo. In May 2010, Congress blocked funding for the prison there, and all future replacement detention facilities in the U.S.
By June 2010, the push to shutter the detention camp began to lose steam. Political opposition and competing national priorities, The New York Times wrote, made it unlikely the president would fulfill his promise before the end of 2013….”
***messymandella*** 