Anna Eshoo: “I thank our very distinguished, wonderful chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. We are here this evening for one…”

“I thank our very distinguished, wonderful chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. We are here this evening for one reason and one reason only: it is to override the President's veto of the House authorization for the intelligence community. And the reason, the stated reason, and the President said so, the reason he vetoed the bill is because he is for torture. T-o-r-t-u-r-e. It's what the President said. This is a very sad, dark moment for our country that a President of the United States would remove all of the tools that we've provided for the intelligence community in a post-9/11 world and say, Because you don't allow torture, I'm not for the bill. Now, the President's position is entirely inconsistent with our Nation's history. The United States of America has long accepted that torture is beneath the standard of a civil nation. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of water torture on a U.S. civilian. The military has frequently prosecuted American military personnel for subjecting prisoners to torture since the Spanish-American War. Our Nation was able to win two world wars and defeat a rising tide of communism with a torture prohibition in place. And I think that we can defeat America's enemies today without lowering ourselves, without allowing ourselves to become the organizers against us. That's what we have done.…”