Obama Says No More Detainees to Yemen But Renews Vow to Close Gitmo

President Obama today renewed his vow to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo, but said in light of the security situation in Yemen, the U.S. would not transfer any more Yemenis being held at the base back to their country.

Obama made the statement after reviewing again with top security aides the events and failures that led up to the attempted bombing on Christmas Day of a Detroit-bound plane by a Nigerian who had been supplied with explosives and trained to use them by an offshoot of al Qaeda operating in Yemen.

Appearing frustrated and angry about what has been found out so far, Obama said that the security apparatus "had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots."

"That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it," he said.

Obama said he had "made it clear today to my team I want our initial reviews completed this week. I want specific recommendations for corrective actions to fix what went wrong. I want those reforms implemented immediately so that this doesn't happen again and so we can prevent future attacks. "

He said a summary of a preliminary report on what had been discovered would be made public this week.

On the Guantanamo issue, there are over 90 Yemenis still being detained there. The U.S. transferred six of them back to Yemen last month after they were graded as low-risk, but even before Obama's statement today, the administration had determined that the security situation was such that no more should be sent at this time.

"Given the unsettled situation, I've spoken to the attorney general and we've agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time," Obama said.

But he added that he was determined to go ahead with plans to close Guantanamo despite assertions by critics that the Christmas Day incident was one more reason not to do so, since some detainees who have returned home had rejoined al Qaeda and other groups.

"Make no mistake," Obama said. "We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

Obama said "we will close the prison in a manner that keeps the American people safe and secure."