President Obama on Tuesday will defend his counterterrorism approach in a speech to service members and argue against torturing terror suspects with methods like waterboarding.

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“I think you’ll hear him talk again about the need to have a sustainable approach in which we adhere to the rule of law and we are upholding our values in everything that we’re doing, precisely because this is a long-term, enduring effort," Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters Monday.

"We need to see our status as a nation of laws and our commitment to our values as a strength and not a weakness.”

The president is meeting with active duty troops and then giving a speech Tuesday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. The speech is expected to be Obama’s last national security address while in office.

Rhodes said the speech was planned long before the Nov. 8 elections and is not aimed at President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE, who vowed on the campaign trail to subject detainees to a “hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

“I think you’ll see him, in the context of a lot of the rhetoric that we’ve heard over the last several years, making the point that, you know, not only have we not been harmed by the fact that we don’t use enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, we’ve actually been strengthened because it’s easier to get other nations to cooperate with us,” he said.

“And, frankly, we get good intelligence from the interrogation teams that work to get information from terrorists that we’ve detained.”

Jordan Fabian contributed.