Political Quotes

“more than most people, a Senator lives by his words. Words are the coin of the realm in our profession. Occasionally, words will fail us. Occasionally, we will fail words. On June 14, I took the floor of the Senate to speak about genuine, heartfelt concerns about the treatment of prisoners and detainees at Guantanamo and other places. I raised legitimate concerns that others have raised, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, about the policies of this administration and whether they truly do serve our needs to make America safer and more secure; whether, in fact, some of the policies might, in fact, endanger our troops or in some way disparage the image of America around the world. During the course of that presentation, I read an e-mail from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was discovered to exist last August and has now been produced as part of a Freedom of Information Act. After reading the horrible details in that memo, which characterized the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, I then, on my own--my own words--made some characterizations about that memo. I made reference to the Nazis, to the Soviets, and other repressive regimes. Mr. President, I have come to understand that was a very poor choice of words. Last Friday, I tried to make this very clear, that I understood that those analogies to the Nazis and Soviets and others were poorly chosen.…”