On February 4, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) lashed out against those pretending the closure of Guantanamo Bay will save America from terror attacks and said that as far as he’s concerned, terrorists “can rot in hell.”
In a CSPAN video of Cotton’s statements, the Senator was addressing the so-called propaganda value of Guantanamo Bay when he asked Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Brian McKeon, “How many detainees were at Guantanamo Bay on September 11, 2001?” McKeon reponded, “Zero.” Cotton then asked, “How many were there on October 2000 when Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole?” McKeon again responded, “Zero.”
Cotton then asked: “What about 1998 when they bombed our embassies?” McKeon responded, “The facility was not open before 2002.”
Undeterred, Cotton asked how many detainees were at Guantanamo Bay in 1993 during the first World Trade Center bombing? “In 1979 when Iran took over our embassy?” And “in 1983 when Hezbollah bombed our Marine barracks in Lebanon?” Cotton then answered his own questions by saying, “The answer is zero.”
Cotton then said: “Islamist terrorists don’t need an excuse to attack the United States. They don’t attack us for what [we] do, they attack us for who we are.” He said the decision to close Guantanamo Bay was “not a security decision but a political decision [Obama] made on his campaign.” He suggested the very language of “security decision” is being used as “a pretext to justify a political decision.”
Cotton concluded:
In my opinion, the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe. As far as I’m concerned every last one of them can rot in hell, but as long as they don’t do that they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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