Political Quotes

“let me say one does not have to go too far with this amendment before finding a very strong point for defeating the amendment and objecting to it. Quoting section 802, it states that none of the funds made available in this act may be used to defend in court. So the U.S. cannot even send in people to defend in court the detention for more than 30 days of a person apprehended on United States territory solely because that person is classified as an enemy combatant. Very simply, we have people who have been in Guantanamo, in fact who have been released from Guantanamo, who have been proven to have gone back to the battlefield and taken up arms against the United States. If the Sherman amendment passed, if we caught Osama bin Laden in the U.S. tomorrow, the Department of Justice would not be able to legally defend his detention as an enemy combatant. That makes absolutely no sense. It states further that none of the funds made available in this act may be used to classify any person as an enemy combatant if that person is apprehended on United States territory. We could have somebody driving a hijacked airplane and clearly in an act of aggression against the United States, and none of the funds available in this act, even if that person intended and was attempting to drive that airplane into a U.S. building, killing Americans, none of the funds in this act could be used to classify that person as an enemy combatant.”