{"id":1977,"date":"2013-04-30T11:44:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T15:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2013-04-30T11:44:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T15:44:18","slug":"obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"President Obama holds news conference\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vy-fsgXR4jw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From today&#8217;s press conference:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. &#8220;It&#8217;s not necessary to keep America safe. It&#8217;s expensive. It&#8217;s inefficient. It hurts us&#8221; with allies and the global community. &#8220;Now, Congress has determined that they won&#8217;t let us close it. [&#8230;] I&#8217;m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that is in the best interests of the American people.&#8221; Obama calls Guantanamo &#8220;a no man&#8217;s land&#8221; and says the notion that we&#8217;re going to keep people there without trial &#8220;in perpetuity&#8221; is &#8220;contrary to who we are.&#8221; It&#8217;s &#8220;easy to demagogue&#8221; the issue but he says he&#8217;s going to go back to Congress.<\/p>\n<p>8:17 AM PT: &#8220;We should be wiser&#8221; than to continue to keep Guantanamo open. &#8220;This is a lingering problem that is not going to get better, it&#8217;s going to fester, it&#8217;s going to get worse.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2013\/04\/30\/1205819\/-President-Obama-news-conference-1\">transcript of full conference<\/a> at DailyKos)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From today&#8217;s press conference: 8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. &#8220;It&#8217;s not necessary to keep America safe. It&#8217;s expensive. It&#8217;s inefficient. It hurts us&#8221; with allies and the global community. &#8220;Now, Congress has determined that they won&#8217;t let us close&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29,159,161,43,35],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nation-building","tag-barack-obama","tag-civil-rights","tag-guantanamo","tag-obama-administration","tag-wombat"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From today&#8217;s press conference: 8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. &#8220;It&#8217;s not necessary to keep America safe. It&#8217;s expensive. It&#8217;s inefficient. It hurts us&#8221; with allies and the global community. &#8220;Now, Congress has determined that they won&#8217;t let us close&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-04-30T15:44:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo - City of Brass","og_description":"From today&#8217;s press conference: 8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. &#8220;It&#8217;s not necessary to keep America safe. It&#8217;s expensive. It&#8217;s inefficient. It hurts us&#8221; with allies and the global community. &#8220;Now, Congress has determined that they won&#8217;t let us close&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html","og_site_name":"City of Brass","article_published_time":"2013-04-30T15:44:18+00:00","author":"Aziz Poonawalla","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html","name":"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo - City of Brass","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-04-30T15:44:18+00:00","dateModified":"2013-04-30T15:44:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2013\/04\/obama-still-wants-to-close-guantanamo-gitmo.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/","name":"City of Brass","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}