PRESIDENT BARAK OBAMA TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO

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PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TALKING ABOUT GUANTANAMO

MR. GROVE: The question we missed from the deck, but it was about Guantanamo, and essentially he was just saying why is it taking so long to close down Guantanamo?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's pretty straightforward. Number one, you've got a whole bunch of individuals in Guantanamo, some of whom are very dangerous, some of whom were low-level fighters, some of whom the courts have determined should never have been put there in the first place. We've had to evaluate each of those cases, hundreds of cases, one by one, to determine what these various categories are, and do it in a way that stands up to our standards of due process and legal scrutiny.
Then we've got to figure out, if we're closing Guantanamo, where are we going to put them? And we have proposed that there are a number of options on the continental United States where you could hold these people as trials either in military commissions or in Article 3 courts are pending. But unfortunately, there has been a lot of political resistance, and, frankly, some of it just politically motivated -- some of it people being legitimately scared about, well, if we've got somebody who we've been told is a terrorist in our backyard, will that make us a target?
One of the things that we've had to try to communicate to the country at large is that, historically, we've tried a lot of terrorists in our courts; we have them in our federal prisons; they've never escaped. And these folks are no different. But it's been one of those things that's been subject to a lot of, in some cases, pretty rank politics.
And we've got to work through that process because Congress ultimately controls the purse strings in creating new facilities. If Congress makes a decision that they are going to try to block the opening of a new facility, it potentially constrains what our administration can do. And so this is something that we've got to work through both in Congress but also with public opinion so that people understand that ultimately this is the right thing to do. By closing Guantanamo, we can regain the moral high ground in the battle against these terrorist organizations.
There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. And that's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do.

MR. GROVE: Mr. President, we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure we get to the issue of energy, the environment.