WASHINGTON -- In soaring rhetoric Thursday, President Barack Obama ran through his logic for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, a sweeping argument against those who claim Americans will be in danger if the jail is shut.

The president sought in timing and place to steal the march on the drum beat of Vice President Dick Cheney, who has charged Obama is endangering Americans by closing the terrorist lockup at a U.S. naval base on Cuba.

Within minutes of Obama striding from the podium in the marble rotunda of the National Archives -- home to the original American Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights -- Cheney popped up on television screens across the nation from the halls of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Cheney spoke to again refute charges leveled against the Bush administration and to defend the tactics it used to capture and interrogate prisoners captured after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Guantánamo was opened to hold prisoners captured in that administration's war on terror.

While Cheney has sought to stoke the debate over closing Guantánamo and has defended himself and former President George W. Bush, the former vice president added little to the debate.

Obama himself brought little new to his extended speech, but most deliberately appeared to be planting himself squarely in the middle ground between the conservatives behind Cheney and the critics on Obama's left who charge he has stopped short of a true defense of American legal protections.

''On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency,'' Obama said in a pointed return of fire from those to his left.

'On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: `anything goes,' '' Obama said.

The counter-fire on Cheney, who was never mentioned by name, was clear: ``Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the president should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants provided that it is a president with whom they agree.''

Obama vowed on his second day in office to close Guantánamo Bay as an affront to American values and a ''recruiting poster'' for terrorists organizations like al Qaeda. But in setting a one-year deadline for the lockup to go out of existence, Obama said he would need much of that time to develop plans for what to do with prisoners held there.

Support for the move, even among fellow Democrats, began to wither.

In the meantime, he asked Congress for $80 million to fund work on closing the jail, but was hit with a bipartisan slap-down. Members of both the House and Senate, primarily reacting to fears being whipped up among Guantánamo closure opponents, refused Obama the money because there were no guarantees that dangerous terrorists might not be headed to prisons in their states.

Obama sought in his long speech to salve those fears and the arguments seemed to make sense.

But the United States still may be too close to the Sept. 11 attacks for Obama's densely crafted and logically constructed vision to hold sway.

Editor's note: Steven R. Hurst, who has covered foreign policy for 30 years, reports from the White House for The Associated Press.