President Obama may have signed the defense bill that keeps Guantanamo Bay open for another year, but he is still verbally promising to close down the facility.
Obama appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday and discussed closing Gitmo by the end of next year with host Candy Crowley.
“I’m going to do everything I can to close it,” he said. “It is — it is something that continues to inspire jihadists and extremists around the world, the fact that these folks are being held. It is contrary to our values, and it is wildly expensive. We’re spending millions for each individual there.”
He lauded his administration’s efforts to lower the number of prisoners held there.
“And we have drawn down the population there significantly. There are a little less than 150 individuals left in this facility. We are going to continue to place those who have been cleared for release or transfer to host countries that are willing to take them. There’s going to be a certain irreducible number that are going to be really hard cases, because, you know, we know they have done something wrong and they are still dangerous, but it’s difficult to mount the evidence in a traditional Article III court,” he said.
“So, we’re going to have to wrestle with that. But we need to close that facility. And I’m going to do everything I can.”
Obama said he wanted to see them in supermax facilities instead.
“I think that it does not make sense for us to spend millions of dollars per individual, when we have a way of solving this problem that’s more consistent with our values,” he said.
Obama has been promising to close Guantanamo Bay since his election in 2008. Experts expect that he will push for it more during his final two years in office, though it could be made more difficult with a Republican-led Congress.
Watch the clip below:
