President Obama's final letter of appeal to the senate for the closure of Guantanomo Bay

buzzz worthy. . .

For 15 years, the United States has detained hundreds of people

at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, a facility that

never should have been opened in the first place. Rather

than keeping us safer, the detention facility at Guantanamo

undermines American national security. Terrorists use it for

propaganda, its operations drain our military resources during a

time of budget cuts, and it harms our partnerships with allies

and countries whose cooperation we need against today's evolving

terrorist threat. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open

far exceed the complications involved in closing it.

As President, I have tried to close Guantanamo. When

I inherited this challenge, it was widely recognized that

the facility -- which many around the world continue to

condemn -- needed to close. Unfortunately, what had previously

been bipartisan support for closure suddenly became a partisan

issue. Despite those politics, we have made progress. This

Administration established a comprehensive, interagency review

process to assess whether the transfer of a detainee is in the

national security interest of the United States. Under this

rigorous process, we have transferred 196 detainees from

Guantanamo with arrangements designed to keep them from engaging

in acts that pose a threat to the United States and our allies.

Of the nearly 800 detainees at one time held at the facility,

today only 41 remain.

The Department of Defense has also provided the Congress with

a comprehensive plan to finally close Guantanamo once and for

all. In addition to calling for us to continue to identify

and effectuate secure transfer opportunities, it calls for the

continued periodic review of the threat posed by individuals

still detained, the use of all legal tools to deal with the

remaining detainees still held under law of war detention, and

the identification of a secure location in the United States to

hold remaining detainees who are subject to military commissions

or who we have determined must continue to be detained because

they pose a continuing significant threat to the United States.

I have included an update to that plan here.

The restrictions imposed by the Congress that prevent us from

imprisoning detainees -- even to prosecute and secure a life

sentence -- in the United States make no sense. No person has

ever escaped one of our super-max or military prisons here,

ever. There is simply no justification beyond politics for

the Congress' insistence on keeping the facility open. Members

of Congress who obstruct efforts to close the facility, given

the stakes involved for our security, have abdicated their

responsibility to the American people. They have placed

politics above the ongoing costs to taxpayers, our relationships

with our allies, and the threat posed to U.S. national security

by leaving open a facility that governments around the world

condemn and which hinders rather than helps our fight against

terrorism.

If this were easy, we would have closed Guantanamo years ago.

But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our

fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to bring it

to a responsible end. Once again, I encourage the Congress to

close the facility and permit more of our brave men and women

in uniform serving at Guantanamo Bay to return to meeting the

challenges of the 21st century around the globe. There remains

bipartisan support for closing Guantanamo and we can do so in a

responsible and secure way that also saves the American taxpayer

money. Guantanamo is contrary to our values and undermines our

standing in the world, and it is long past time to end this

chapter in our history.

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA