Political Quotes

“I will finish up then. As we go forward on these, I would hope there would be some deliberation and that the vote, as it goes forward, people will think about that we need to balance our freedoms with our security. I think we all want security. Nobody wants what happened on 9/11 to happen again. But I think we do not need to simplify the debate to such an extent that we simply say we have to give up our liberties. For example, I cannot tell you how many times people have come up to me in Washington, unelected officials, and said: We could have gotten Moussaoui, the 19th hijacker, if we had the PATRIOT Act. The truth is, we did not capture Moussaoui because we had poor police work. Ask yourself: Did we fire anybody after 9/11? We gave people gold medals. We gave them medals of honor for their intelligence work after 9/11. To my knowledge, not one person was fired. Do you think we were doing a good job before 9/11? We had the 19th hijacker in prison, in custody for a month before 9/11. We had his computer. When they looked at Moussaoui's computer 4 days after 9/11 or the day after 9/11, they connected all of the dots to most of the hijackers and to people in Pakistan. Why did we not look at his computer? Was it because we did not have the prerogative? They did not ask. An FBI agent in Minnesota wrote 70 letters to his superiors saying: Ask for a warrant. His superiors did not ask for a warrant. Do you think we should have done something about that after 9/11?…”