President Obama is signaling urgency on the issue of closing Guantanamo Bay, insisting that the prison holding radical Islamic terrorists is a key reason ISIS is committing acts of terror.
“Guantanamo has been an enormous recruitment tool for organizations like ISIL,” he said. “It’s part of how they rationalize and justify their demented, sick perpetration of violence on innocent people.”
Obama made his remarks about the prison after a meeting with newly elected Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in the Philippines.
During the press conference, he lectured American political leaders for blocking his desire to close the prison, which he argued alienated Muslim Americans.
“We can keep the American people safe while shutting down that operation,” he said, noting that he had already drastically reduced the population.
Obama has already postponed his plan to close the prison, and admitted that it would be a difficult conversation to have so soon after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
“I guarantee you there will be strong resistance, because in the aftermath of Paris, I think that there is just a very strong tendency for us to get worked up around issues that don’t actually make us safer but make for good political sound bites,” he said.
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