White House plans to close Gitmo face long odds

Among the obstacles: existing law limits transfers, the new Congress seems even more hostile to loosening those restrictions than the previous one, and the president’s plan to bring some prisoners to the U.S. for open-ended detention faces resistance from both the right and the left.

And that’s not all. A terrorism threat that once seemed to be fading has reared up again, with gains by groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and last week’s attack on a Paris newspaper stoking fears that released prisoners could return to the fight.

So, while Obama has defied Congress in recent months on issues like immigration and the environment, and he has stepped up efforts to transfer prisoners overseas — moving a flurry of 21 abroad since mid-November — it’s far from clear that he’ll succeed in closing the base. That’s because just chipping away at the numbers won’t do it.

“How close you are to closing the facility is not now and never has been a function of the number of people held,” said Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution. “The group of people who are moving out now have been cleared for transfer for a long time. … Not until they’re making disposition decisions for people who have not been cleared for transfer for five years is it that you’re going to convince me that we’re in some game-changing Guantánamo moment.”