© Khaama Press
After initial plans for a more aggressive push to close the facility — including rebuffed attempts to recruit a special envoy to oversee the strategy — the White House changed course, sources said. The administration has opted to wait before it reaches out to Congress, which has thwarted previous efforts to close the camp, because of fears that political outcry might interfere with the rest of Biden's agenda. A former senior administration official involved in the discussions said of Biden officials:
"They don't want it to become a dominant issue that blows up. They don't want it to become a lightning rod. They want it to be methodical, orderly."The administration hopes to transfer a handful of the remaining terrorism suspects to foreign countries, the people familiar with the discussions said, and then persuade Congress to permit the transfer of the rest — including 9/11 suspects — to detention on the U.S. mainland. Biden hopes to close the facility by the end of his first term, the people familiar with the discussions said.
But even though just 40 people are left at Gitmo, the Biden administration faces many of the same obstacles that doomed President Barack Obama's much more public effort to close it a dozen years ago.
Comment: Relevant as always, Biden shared his #1 military priority while placing plastic straws a little farther down the list.