Washington, DC--In a speech held this afternoon at the National Defense University in Washington, President Obama announced concrete steps to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, including appointing a senior envoy in the State Department tasked with closing the facility, and lifting the ban on detainee transfers to Yemen. Col. Morris Davis, a former Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who left his post in 2007 over the interrogation tactics used, provided the below response to the news. His popular Change.org petition calling on President Obama to close the facility has drawn more than 200,000 supporters in a number of weeks: “With the President’s announcement today, it seems years of rhetoric have finally turned into action."