Political Quotes

“Again, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. Just in listening to her, it seems so unacceptable that we are basically telegraphing to our enemy exactly the range of tactics that we will use against them as part of the interrogation. We have set some quite appropriate constraints in this amendment consistent with our values and our laws and international law so that we are not going to get anywhere near torture. But when a member of al- Qaida or a similarly associated terrorist group is captured, I want that person to be terrified about what is going to happen to them while in American custody. I want them not to know what is going to happen. I want the terror they inflict on others to be felt by them as a result of the uncertainty of not knowing they can look on the Internet and find out exactly what our interrogators are going to be limited to. Again, we will not tolerate torture. We will not tolerate what happened at Abu Ghraib. I think the limited interrogation in the Army Field Manual was an understandable but excessive reaction to the extreme and unacceptable behavior by Americans at Abu Ghraib. I hope this amendment will facilitate a return to the kind of sensible middle ground on which we will not be shackling our interrogators as they try to get intelligence, within the law, to protect our freedom and the safety of those who are fighting for us.…”