tolls from the terrorists they targeted dwarfed estimates of civilian kauscasualties. he made a renewed push to close guantanamo bay and asked congress to lift restrictions from gitmo and speed up the process of trials and military commissions and transferring detainees. a lot to chew on and we re going to start with congressman tho thornberry, a member of the house armed services and intelligence. congressman, what is your reaction? well, i thought it was interesting. when he was interrupted and went off-script the president said he s these are serious issues we can t gloss over and yet he s also seemed to say in the speech that we can finish defeating al qaeda and get back to a pre- 9/11 sort of mentality. well, that s kind of glossing over, i think, a lot of the details. even on guantanamo, he said if we are just committed to cloeing it we can work out the details later and what happens to people there and so forth. that s kind of glossing over what s been the hold-up.
freedoms. so now you know this as well as i do, jake, the minute that you say there is an inquiry and a study under way, now whenever we re going to ask the question in the press briefing room about this, they will say, you know there s a study under way so we ll answer that question once the results of that study are complete. so i bet that will kick those answers down the road and we won t get those answers any more. so i think dlr a lthere are a l questions that this still leaves unaddressed and some of his critics on the left will still be unsatisfied. but at least he s on the record trying to address his policy and define it before the books on this administration are closed, jake. we have to wrap up but i want to go to congressman thornberry for one last thought. i found it interesting, congressman, you re on the intelligence committee on the house of representatives so i m sure you were aware of some of these details already. but there s been no little that has been publicly s
to increase the oversight over these lethal drone operations and capture operations that, again, has bipartisan support. if the president would endorse something like that i think it would go a long way to building trust that he is willing to have that independent oversight from congress looking over the details of these actions in a classified manner but i think that helped build trust in the public that somebody else is looking at this. i think he needs to do that. all right, congressman thornberry. that s all for me right now. i ll be back in 47 minutes on the lead. brook baldwin is live in moore, oklahoma, and she ll have special coverage conning of this break. ? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who s lived well into their 90s. and that s a great thing. but even though we re living longer, one thing that hasn t changed much is the official retirement age.