Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there was a column written in this morning's Washington Post which was extraordinary. It was written by one of our Republican colleagues, Senator John McCain of Arizona. John McCain and I came to the House of Representatives in the same year--1983. Though he came to the Senate first, we have worked on many things together over the years. We have our differences, that is for sure. But there are times when John does extraordinarily good things, and this morning was one of them. He wrote a column in the Washington Post about the issue of torture. It is an issue that has been in the headlines for the last 2 weeks, after the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden and the questions raised as to whether so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture in another parlance, were used to obtain information that led to Osama bin Laden. A few years ago, that issue came up on the floor of the Senate. I had strong feelings about it. But Senator McCain stepped up and led the effort to put the Senate and our government on record that we were opposed to the use of torture. No person is better qualified in this Congress to speak to it than Senator McCain. He was a victim of torture himself when he served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam war. He was shot down as a naval aviator and spent more than 5 years in prison. I cannot imagine what that must have been like.…”