On the recordMarch 6, 2013
I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for asking his questions and being part of the debate. I think that ultimately we could get this straightened out in the sense that it is not so much about the debate about the person as it is about the issue. If we could get the administration or the Attorney General to put their answer in a succinct form and simply say they believe they have the authority to repel an attack, which most of--I think all of us agree to that, but they do not have the authority to kill someone in a restaurant, to kill someone at home in their house, to kill someone when they are eating dinner; that, really, if you want to say that you can use drones in America to strike people, not only would it have to be remarkably different, it could not be anything like the way we use drones around the world, which brings up some other important questions. The thing is this has brought us to a much bigger and important debate. When people tell you that America is a battlefield, when they tell you the battlefield is here, realize what they are telling you. They are telling you your Bill of Rights do not apply because in the battlefield, you really do not have due process. I am not arguing for that. I am not arguing for some kind of silly rules for soldiers to ask for Miranda rights and do all this. War is war. War is hell. But we cannot have perpetual war. We cannot have war that has no temporal limits.…
Source
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