Boehner: Guantanamo could be deal breaker on Afghan funds

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio warned Thursday that he would not back emergency funding for President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan troop surge if the White House request includes money to transfer Guantanamo detainees to the United States.

“I am not going to support a bill that — that facilitates bringing Gitmo prisoners to the United States,” he told a news conference, using a popular shorthand for the military prison.

The White House on Tuesday said it plans to move some war on terror detainees held in prison camps at Guantanamo, in southeast Cuba, to a maximum-security prison in northern Illinois.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment late Thursday. But there was no indication whether the Obama administration would join together its requests for funding 30,000 to 35,000 additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan and moving Guantanamo detainees to Illinois.

Boehner’s warning came a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke out about funding for Obama’s most important foreign policy initiative, a plan expected to elicit a White House request for $30 billion to $40 billion.

On Wednesday, Pelosi, D-Calif., said she isn’t going to personally lobby war-weary House Democrats to support a funding measure for the Afghan surge because she promised her caucus that the previous supplemental war appropriations bill would be the last. Obama, she said, must make his own case.