Political Quotes

“I have heard a number of Members who oppose this amendment talk about the importance of sending the right message to the world. We should send the right message. We should send the truth. Here is the truth, which dozens of Members know because they have attended the open and classified briefings we have had on Guantanamo. We have spent as much time in the Committee on Armed Services over the last 3 or 4 weeks working on the security of people in Guantanamo as we have working on our own troops in the warfighting theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq. Number one, there has not been a single death in Guantanamo. There is not a Member who has argued against this amendment who can say at the same time there has not been a single death in their own prison system in the State they come from. Everybody in Guantanamo is allowed five prayer calls a day. That means we use our loudspeaker system to bring them to prayer call. We give them 20 minutes of quiet time. We give them great meals. We give them a medical system we have looked over very carefully, Democrats and Republicans, which is considered to be as good as any HMO system in this country, in which every detainee gets four checkups, on average, per month. We have had over 24,000 interrogations in Guantanamo, and here are the facts: People have talked about the use of dogs, the fact that dogs have been present at Guantanamo at various times, especially with the 20th hijacker, Mr.…”