Why hasn't Barack Obama closed the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay?

[TheKentuckian]

32. For six months it was because Obama wanted to thread the political needle

and move Gitmo to US soil proper rather than using the exact same authority as Bush to put the prisoners on trial or release them.
He could have transferred these folks at anytime, there was no restriction but he didn't want to take that level of political risk with the howling going on and he also wanted to hold some of them peremently without trial and he wanted some military tribunerals so to make it work he had to close Gitmo in name only but to do so required a special appropriation for a Supermax facility at which point he got caught up and Congress denied the money and for good measure placed unconstitutional restrictions on executive authority as well as set up a regeime of permenent detention without trial, which also is unconstitutional.

Now, the President saw this bill working its way through and rather than relocate the prisoners to existing facilities and schedule trials he waited for the process to work its self out and then stupidly signed his own unconstitutional handcuffs into law.

Before May 21, 2009 (or there abouts), Obama could have closed the gulag without a word from Congress. He elected not to for exclusively political not logistical or legal reasons.

The real answer is he chose not to. The finger pointing at Congress for not funding Gitmo North is entirely a smokescreen to distract from the fact that Obama wanted to thread the needle and was especially sensitive to potential blowback in swing states like Indiana where the prisoners would be most logically transferred. Illinois was selected for Gitmo North because it was seen as politically safe to do so.

Before Obama signed the bill in the May following is election there was nothing whatsoever to stop him from relocating prisoners or scheduling proceedings, the entire deal went off the tracks by trying to secure the funding for the new facility.