Obama Closing Guantanamo Bay, Focusing on Foreign Policy

Working quickly to undo some of the less popular national security measures put in place by his predecessor under the wide-reaching and possibly illegal Patriot Act, President Barack Obama is starting with shutting down Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo, as the U.S. facility is often referred to, has been in the news often of late as stories of torture and abuse of suspected terrorists has hit the news. Said Obama, who indicated that the Gitmo facility would be shut down within a year, "We intend to win this fight, we are going to win it on our terms."

Obama, who is spending his second day in office working on foreign affairs, noted that shutting down the Cuban prison would send a message to the world, which has largely seen the facility as a symbol of all that has gone wrong with America’s approach to fighting terror on a global scale and with the excesses of the Bush administration. Obama noted that his administration would not "continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals. It is precisely our ideals which give us the strength and moral ground to deal with the unthinking violence that we see emanating from terrorism organizations around the world."

Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, who will oversee all intelligence agencies in the new Obama administration, noted that the Gitmo facility will be closed because it is "a damaging symbol to the world." He went on to signal what appears to be a shift in government thinking with regards to the balance between civil liberties and national security when he said, "The intelligence agencies of the United States must respect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people, and they must adhere to the rule of law."