The only thing regrettable is KSM and the rest of them are still breathing air…

(Politico) — White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday that it was unfortunate that some terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay need to be held indefinitely without trial.

“Some would be tried in federal courts, as we’ve seen done in the past. Some would be tried in military commissions, likely spending the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison that nobody, including terrorists, have ever escaped from. Some, regrettably, will have to be indefinitely detained,” Gibbs said on CNN’s “State of the Union” as he described Obama’s beleaguered plan for closing Guantanamo.

The press secretary quickly sought to clarify his comments by adding, “I say ‘regrettably’ not because it’s a bad thing for — necessarily for them in terms of the fact that they’re very dangerous people and we have to make sure that even if we can’t prosecute them, we’re not putting them back out on the battlefield.”

With Obama now almost a year overdue on his promise to close Guantanamo, Gibbs offered no prediction that the president’s plan would come to fruition anytime soon. “It’s certainly not going to close in the next month,” Gibbs said. “I think it’s going to be a while.”

Gibbs’s comments came following an exchange in which CNN’s Candy Crowley suggested that the president had the authority to close Guantanamo but had not. Gibbs replied by noting that legislation passed by Congress bars bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. “There are prohibitions, legislatively, on the transfer,” he noted.