President Barack Obama's renewed effort to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay faces the same steep political climb as in his first term: To make Thursday's announcement work, Congress would have to accept a plan to move some detainees from Cuba to the United States.
Obama did signal in his speech that he would restart the process of sending home or resettling in third countries those detainees who were cleared for transfer four years ago by an interagency task force. As part of that commitment, the president announced he would lift his self-imposed moratorium on transferring Yemeni detainees because of concerns about security in their home country.
The president also said he would appoint a senior official who will work at the State Department and the Pentagon to shepherd the process through a sometimes reluctant bureaucracy.