She said she couldn’t help but feel “like we were a throw in” after reading that the president was stopping in San Bernardino while en route to Hawaii for his annual holiday getaway.
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After meeting the victims’ families, Obama said that he was moved by their emphasis on tolerance and described them as representatives of the “strength, unity and love” seen across the U.S., Reuters reported.
Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire two weeks ago at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, killing 14 and wounding 22 in the deadliest terrorist attack in the US since 9/11.
“It will not happen”, Obama said during his year-end press conference at the White House.
Speculation has swirled in recent months that Obama plans to bypass Congress in order to shut the prison. “That people are investigating what individuals have said publicly, and questioned about any statements that they maybe made”.
Obama also met with first responders, according to San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan, who said a call on Thursday from the White House “indicated they wanted to meet with some of the first responders as well”.
Between the US and coalition partners, almost 9,000 airstrikes have been launched since past year, Obama said, claiming that more bombs were dropped in November than at any other time, destroying ISIS “fighting positions, bunkers, and staging areas; their heavy weapons, bomb-making factories, compounds and training camps”.
‘In any battle, ‘ he said, ‘even as you make progress there’s still dangers involved’.
Obama’s acknowledgement that the country is vulnerable to continued attack is unlikely to settle an American public spooked by the prospect of fresh strikes by radical Islamists.
“It was a reminder of what’s good in this country”, Obama said. “There will probably be a lot of noise about that”, Obama said. It’s also expensive, holding “only a handful of people, and each person is costing several million dollars to detain when there are more efficient ways of doing it”, he said.
He said he will wait until Congress has said definitively no to a plan on closing the facility before he would say “anything definitive about my executive authority here”.
“It was a reminder of what’s good in this country and I hope that’s something that gives all Americans a sense of pride and a sense of hope as we go into our celebrations of our faith and our families and our countries”. And if we have the courage to take the second step then suddenly we’ve taken 10 steps. “I think we can make a really strong argument”.
Unusually in Obama’s tenure, Washington is not ending the year locked in a political showdown between the White House and Republicans who control Capitol Hill.
Mr Obama said that if he did send troops to Syria, as some Republicans have urged, he feared a slippery slope that would eventually require similar deployments to other terrorist strongholds like Libya and Yemen, effectively putting him in charge of governing much of the region.
At the same time, the president voiced optimism about advancing the trade deal and criminal-justice reform because of the way Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) ushered a $1.1 trillion spending bill through Congress.
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Capping a year packed with accomplishments, but marred in the last month by new concerns over terror, President Barack Obama started his last press conference of 2015 on Friday by touting his achievements from the year, including negotiations with Cuba and Iran, action on climate change and more number of people signing up for the Affordable Care Act.
