WASHINGTON — Though newly minted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would ideally like to see the Guantanamo Bay detainees “rot in hell,” he views the harsh conditions at the prison camp as an acceptable alternative. It now appears that he’s so dedicated to keeping the remaining detainees there — regardless of whether they actually pose a threat to U.S. interests — that he’s willing to torpedo the complex web of U.S. foreign relations to do it.
The Huffington Post has learned that Cotton last week suggested cutting U.S. assistance to any ally that helps resettle Guantanamo detainees whom the government has cleared for release. It was not clear whether such sanctions would also apply retroactively to countries that have already taken detainees.
In a closed-door Senate Armed Services Committee meeting about a new bill restricting the Obama administration’s efforts to move prisoners out of Guantanamo, Cotton floated his idea as an amendment.
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“We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay,” the senator said last week about a facility where detainees have undergone force-feeding and sleep deprivation.
“In my opinion,” he’d said earlier in February, “the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is that there are too many empty beds and cells there right now.”
