Spring Break
Obama says U.S. prisoners tough enough for detainees
Steven R. Hurst - The Associated Press
Issue date: 5/11/09 Section: News
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He spoke one day after the Senate voted resoundingly to deny him money to close the prison, and he decried "fear-mongering" that he said had led to such opposition.
He insisted the transfer would not endanger Americans and promised to work with lawmakers to develop a system for holding detainees who can't be tried and can't be turned loose from the Navy-run prison in Cuba.
"There are no neat or easy answers here," Obama said in a speech in which he pledged anew to clean up what he said was "quite simply a mess" at Guantanamo that he had inherited from the Bush administration.
Moments after Obama concluded, former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered his own address across town defending the decisions of the Bush administration in dealing with terrorism. Expressing no remorse for the actions the Bush White House had ordered, Cheney said under the same circumstances he would make the same decisions "without hesitation."
Obama noted that roughly 500 detainees already had been released by the Bush administration. There are 240 at Guantanamo now. The president said that 50 of those had been cleared to be sent to other countries - although he did not identify which countries might be willing to take them.
Obama conceded that some Guantanamo detainees would end up in U.S. prisons and said those facilities were tough enough to house even the most dangerous inmates.
Obama decried arguments used against his plans.
"We will be ill-served by the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue," he declared.
Speaking at the National Archives, Obama said he wouldn't do anything to endanger the American people.
He said opening and continuing the military prison "set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."
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