Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. This is the ninth Defense authorization bill I have been involved in since I have been a Member of the Senate. I must say the refusal by the majority leader to bring this Defense authorization bill to the floor is truly disheartening. It is critically important that we address the issues not only of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan but the day-to-day operations of our military from the standpoint of pay raises, quality of life, purchase of weapons systems for future use--any number of issues that are included. The refusal of the majority leader to bring this to the floor because of his objection to a very critical aspect of this bill truly is disheartening. During committee consideration of the bill, the committee considered and adopted, by a vote of 25 to 1, a comprehensive bipartisan provision relating to detainees. We have no detainee policy in this country today. If we had captured bin Laden, what would we have done with him? If we had captured Anwar al-Awlaki, what would we have done with him? Certainly we could have gained actionable intelligence from either one of those individuals, but we have no detainee policy in this country today. We have nowhere to take them, where we can hold these individuals and ensure that they do not get lawyered up quickly and that we are unable to get the type of information we need to get from individuals such as that.…”