Cheney: Closing Gitmo Would Require Killing Detainees

Suspects "Ought to Be Held Until the End of the Conflict"

Former Vice President Dick Cheney sees only two options with respect to detainees in the never-ending war on terror, and keeping them in prison without charges for the rest of their lives is, believe it or not, the more reasonable one.

“If you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them,” declared Cheney, who believes that suspects “ought to be held until the end of the conflict,” which he had previously said wouldn’t end in any of our lifetimes.

Cheney chided President Obama for issuing an executive order calling for the closure of the facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year, and said the president’s recent backpedaling is a function of his inability to come up with a plan to do so.

Last month Obama lauded congressional Democratics for withholding the funding he requested for closing the facility, and announced he was reviving the Bush-era tribunal system with only minor alterations. He also planned to come up with a new court system which would allow him to detain suspects for life without charges, though on American soil instead of at Guantanamo Bay.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.