During an appearance on The Daily Show, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his belief that Guantanamo Bay should be shut down and said Congress needed to “rein in” presidential power.
“There’s some things that we haven’t gotten done, I still want to close Guantanamo, we haven’t been able to get that done,” Obama told Jon Stewart.
Obama vowed to close down the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison facility during his campaign for president. After taking office, Obama called for some terrorism suspects to face trial in federal civilian courts, but Congress blocked the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States. In 2011, Obama issued an executive order that allowed military trials for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay to resume.
“One of the things that we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place and we need congressional help to do that to make sure that not only am I reined in, but any president’s reined in, in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” he continued. “Now there’s some tough trade-offs, I mean there are times when there are bad folks somewhere on the other side of the world and you’ve got to make a call and it’s not optimal.”
(Source: Comedy Central and RawStory.com)
