This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 23rd, 2016, and Caleb Brown.

The President argues that closing Guantanamo Bay Bay, the prison camp holding many

suspected terrorists, eliminates an important talking point for those hostile to the US.

Ben Friedman, a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute,

says if the president wants to stop talking points, maybe not bombing so many countries

around the world would be more productive.

How different is this plan from what Barack Obama proposed several years ago.

It's not very different.

The president's been trying to close the Guantanamo Bay

Prison-Gitmo since he was president.

He said he would do it in his first year.

He obviously failed. He announced the plan in May 2009 to close it through a mixture of military commissions for some detainees, federal trials for others, and indefinite detention for some.

And the president was prevented from making that plan of reality by annual congressional bans on transferring detainees

to the United States, which means you can't give them trials in the United States.

So we've been transferring people out at a pretty good

clip at least considering how difficult it is. There's now 91 this administration has transferred

147 out so we're draining the prison of its prisoners but the

remaining 91 consists of probably around 60 people who are not eligible to be transferred which means it's

hard to see what's going to happen to them.

The president has highlighted the use of Article 3 courts as an effective means for dealing with people that we suspect of terrorism.

So why not put people like that through that process? I agree with the president that we ought to use federal trials, Article 3 courts, to deal with terrorist suspects as much as we can.

However, the political concern is that it's somehow dangerous to bring prisoners into the United States, terrorists into United States,

...