http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/tom-cotton-guantanamo-bay-tour-116052.html?ml=riTom Cotton tours Gitmo
By NICK GASS 3/13/15 8:19 AM EDT Updated 3/13/15 9:01 AM EDT
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is touring the United States’ Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba Friday along with some freshmen Republican senators, according to a report.
Joining him on the trip are Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and James Lankford of Oklahoma.
“He just feels like it’s an important counterterrorism tool and wants to see it himself firsthand,” Cotton spokeswoman Caroline Rabbitt told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Cotton has previously slammed President Barack Obama’s call for Guantanamo’s closure, saying last month that the United States “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,” Cotton said of Guantanamo prisoners during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in February. “But as long as they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”
Cotton set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill this week after publishing an open letter to Iran’s leaders, signed by 46 other Republican senators, warning that any nuclear deal without the assent of Congress would be perishable.
