Barack Obama, Guantanamo Bay | featured news

President Obama on Thursday will try to take the reins on the debate over national security and rally support for his plan to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in what his administration is billing as a major address. In recent weeks, conservative critics have blasted Obama for what they see as missteps on national security.

President Barack Obama said in an interview aired on Monday he worried that detainees freed from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, might resume attacks on the United States.

A military judge has refused the Obama administration's request to delay proceeding for 120 days in the case of a detainee held at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is accused of planning the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship, an al-Qaeda strike that killed 17 service members and injured 50 others.

The Obama administration intends to devise its own policies on how to handle existing and future terror detainees, but that hasn't stopped the world community from adding its two cents on the question

President Obama signed executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

A military judge approved Wednesday the Obama administration's request to halt the Guantanamo war crimes trials to allow a 120-day suspension to review the system used to try suspected terrorists.