Barack Obama Quotes

I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

Detain terrorists … set up detention facilities outside the United States.

Until the administration can articulate a coherent and convincing policy for closing Guantanamo, it should remain open.

We aren't using Guantanamo Bay anymore to take additional terrorists. That was the perfect facility to be able to use to extract information from people to keep the American people safe.

President Obama has been very clear as he laid out the goal, and the objective is to close Guantanamo.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

The White House has been noticeably schizophrenic on Guantanamo.

A decision by the Supreme Court to subject Guantanamo to judicial review would eliminate these advantages.

The United States is holding hundreds of suspected terrorists in prisons at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Many are locked up indefinitely. They have not been tried or even charged with any crime.

I recommended to the President that we close Guantanamo while I was still in office. While they are arguing about these legalities, we are getting killed around the world in people’s perception. I recommended that we could handle all the prisoners in the United States within our legal system.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Guantanamo is still open, but it's unlikely that serious torture is going on at Guantanamo. There is just too much inspection.

At its height, Guantanamo's population of alleged combatants swelled to nearly 800.

Here's the bigger problem with all this, we're not interrogating anybody right now. Guantanamo's being emptied by this president. We should be putting people into Guantanamo, not emptying it out, and we shouldn't be releasing these killers who are rejoining the battlefield against the United States.

Sources say the Obama administration is in the 'final stages' of planning the closing of Guantanamo Bay. The way it's gonna work is, they're going to put a Radio Shack sign out front and let nature take its course.

This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal.

We've got fifty people at Gitmo that are too dangerous to be let go that will never go through a normal criminal trial. Let's create a new legal system, so they'll have their day in court.

There's no doubt that what has emerged in the years after 9/11, unlike the situation in Britain, there were practices sanctioned in the U.S. that fall far below the standard of conduct that should have taken place. It is for the American system of government, in all of its branches, to address that. It is not for a British politician.

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.

Yesterday I, along with a bipartisan Congressional Delegation of lawmakers, inspected the detention facilities at Guantanamo used to house individuals detained in the War on Terrorism.

The war in Iraq, the abuse of detainees, electronic eavesdropping, Guantanamo Bay - these things were all done on our behalf and they may turn out in the end to have created more terrorists.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

We will never win this war until we understand the effect that Guantanamo Bay has had on the overall war effort. And we'll never get the support of the American people if we can't prove to them that these folks that we're dealing with are not common criminals. We're going to keep them - keep you safe from them.

The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.

Guantanamo Bay houses enemy combatants ranging from terrorist trainers and recruiters to bomb makers, would-be suicide bombers, and terrorist financiers.