FOX "Your World" - Transcript
Interview
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MR. CAVUTO: To Washington, and Senate Democrats folding on Gitmo, at least for now, just today moving to pull the plug on funding needed to shut the place down and move the prisoners here. Is my next guest the reason? Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe joins me right now.
So Senator, we're back to the start here, I guess. Where do we go?
SEN. INHOFE: I think it's kind of a victory. You know, I've been trying to keep Guantanamo open for a long time. There's just no logical reason to close it. There's no place else like it. The treatment is good. And if you should close it, you've got to do something with some pretty bad guys. And I was afraid they'd end up in the United States. So I had an amendment that would keep that from happening, not allowing them to release any funds to either bring a detainee to the United States or to incarcerate them here.
Now, the Democrats, I guess, got a lot of heat for this, and so they pulled my amendment and put their name on the same amendment. It is now the Inouye-Inhofe amendment. So that's behind us. The debate to come, however, Neil, is going to be, what in the world would they do if they were to close Guantanamo? The president already said it's going to close this coming December.
MR. CAVUTO: Yeah, but none of them really want them, even those who oppose it, that is Guantanamo itself, or want them in their districts. So you can't have it both ways. No country have volunteered to take them. So could we possibly keep that thing open? Is that where this goes?
SEN. INHOFE: Yeah, sure. Look, we're going to do everything we can to keep it open. It will stay open because there's no place else to put these guys. You know, I've spent a lot of time over there observing. Right after 9/11 I was over there. And really, there's no place else in the world. And there's another thing, Neil, that our viewers are going to have to understand. That is the only place you can really try these tribunals is in a special type of a court. And if these guys were to somehow get into our court system, the rules of evidence are different. And so they can only use that court in Guantanamo.
Look, we spent $12 million on that thing, might as well use it. Besides, Neil, I bet you don't know of any deal that we've had that's a better deal for America. That only costs us $4,000 a year, the same as it cost us in 1903. Let's keep it open, let's keep the detainees there.
MR. CAVUTO: All right. They were just shy of putting them in a Stuckey's on Route 95 and it didn't work out. Jim Inhofe, thank you very much, Senator.
SEN. INHOFE: Thank you, Neil.
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