. , 15 yearsfter 9/11 after the worst terrorist attack in american history, we are still having to defend the existence of a facility and a process were not a single verdict has been reached in those texts. not a single one. when i first ran for president, it was widely recognized that this facility needed to close. this was not just my opinion. this was not some radical, far left view. there was a bipartisan support to close it. bush,decessor, president to his credit, said he wanted to close it. it was one of the few things that i and my republican opponent, senator john mccain, agreed on. so, in one of my first acts as president i took action to begin closing it. and because we had bipartisan , i wanted to make sure that we did it right. i indicated that we would need , to do it in ae systematic way, and that we had examined all the options. unfortunately, during that time when we were putting the pieces in place to close it, what had previously been bipartisan support suddenly became a partisan issue. hadenly, many who previously said that it should be closed, backed off the cause were
