Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I rise to express my deep concern that the 2012 National Department of Defense Authorization Act provisions pertaining to detainee treatment fail to strike the appropriate, important balance between national security, due process, and civil liberties. Sections 1021, 1022, and 1023 are the latest in a series of legislative proposals that provide ever-narrowing latitude for dealing with terrorism suspects, whether in the U.S. or abroad. I am concerned, that these provisions take us one small, but significant, step down the road towards a state in which ordinary citizens live in fear of the military, rather than the free society that has marked this great nation since the Bill of Rights was ratified 220 years ago, in 1791. The new detention authorities thrust upon our military in this bill are an assault on our civil liberties and do not belong on our books. They were not requested by the Pentagon, in fact they have been resisted by the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the directors of National Intelligence and the FBI. They do not make us safer and, to the contrary, they will create dangerous confusion within our national security community. Under these sections, a terrorism suspect must be remanded to U.S. military custody, even when that suspect presents no imminent threat to public safety and is being held under suspicion of committing a U.S. crime. The suspect may be held indefinitely.…”