Hoekstra: Obama Will Close Gitmo Despite Threat to National Security

President Barack Obama's unrelenting goal to empty Guantanamo Bay is a "terrible idea" that will negatively impact national security and cost American and allies' lives, according to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, who appeared Wednesday on Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."

"The president is hung up on closing Gitmo, regardless of what the cost is going to be to our national security," Hoekstra said. "These are dangerous people, we're sending them to countries that are not going to monitor them and the recidivism rate is going to go higher. Two of the former Gitmo detainees, the State Department has now put a price on their heads saying 'if you capture them again, we'll give your reward for one of these individuals, it'll be $10 million and for another it'll be $5 million.' This is damaging our national security and now the president is saying Gitmo is expensive. What is expensive is releasing these terrorists back to the battlefield."

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Obama promised on his first inauguration day that "come hell or high water" he planned to close Gitmo, "regardless of what that does to our national security," according to Hoekstra, who pointed out that intelligence has confirmed 30 percent of detainees who were released have returned to the battlefield and "we probably don't know where" the other 70 percent are.

Hoekstra predicted that Guantanamo Bay will close in 2015 "because Republicans eventually are going to come to the realization that it's better to move these people to America than to allow the president to continue releasing them."

"It's still a terrible solution, but 2015 will also see the continuation of ISIS and the terrible actions they're committing throughout northern Africa and throughout the Middle East. In 2015, we're going to continue to see ISIS grow in influence and grow in brutality."

Recent reports that the violent terror group ISIS has begun training young children to fight is not only unconscionable but will pose a grave threat to American and allied soldiers.

"Troops fighting ISIS face the real possibility they're going to be going on battlefields or they're going to be seeing a car driving up to a checkpoint that's going to be full of kids or women and not know what to do because our values say protect women and children, whereas ISIS says they're going to use women and children as tools to kill the infidel,"

Hoekstra said. "It's going to put our troops and our allies in a very difficult situation. We have values, they do not."

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