An impassioned Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) slammed the Obama administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, and made his own thoughts on the matter quite clear during a Senate Armed Services hearing this morning.

The freshman senator angrily refuted the administration’s argument that keeping the detention facility open is a security concern because it serves as a propaganda tool for terrorists. Cotton listed the many terrorist attacks that preceded the first Guantanamo prisoner – 9/11, the USS Cole bombing, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, among others – to rebuff the claim. He went on to call the administration’s rationale “a pretext to justify a political decision.”



“In my opinion, the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is that there are too many empty beds and cells there right now,” Cotton said to Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. “We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe.”

“As far as I’m concerned, every last one of them can rot in Hell,” he added. “But as long as they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”