Political Quotes

“I think they are absolutely right, we need to take a look at this in the bigger context. We have to set the stage for how we got to this point. It's September 12, 2001. The President is meeting with his advisers. They're trying to identify exactly what this threat is from al Qaeda, how serious is this threat, what other activities or attacks might they be planning against the United States. And the President says: I need my intelligence and military folks to get the answers to these kinds of questions. Tell me what the threat is and tell me what the tools are that I need to implement to keep America safe. They come back with a series of recommendations, saying here's what we know, here's what we don't know about the threat. They come back and say, here are the different options that are available to us to get the information that might be able to answer some of these questions. The President and his leadership team consider the various options. They say, you know, we need to bring Congress into this to take a look at exactly what tools we're going to implement and make sure that we do this in a bipartisan basis and we do it in a basis that is consistent with American values and American law.”