Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor today to talk about what is happening in Ukraine, but before I do that, I cannot help but--having heard some of the discussion before this from my colleague from Michigan and my colleague from Ohio--add to that discussion. First of all, the President didn't even notify the chair of the intelligence committee and the ranking member of that committee. And I think it is clear why he didn't notify the chair of the intelligence committee. Because there was widespread opposition from the intelligence committee to transferring these five particular detainees, and that was made clear to the administration well before this prisoner swap was made. Moreover, what I find not only shocking--that the chair and ranking member of the intelligence committee weren't consulted about this, but what made my jaw drop was when I learned that our commander in Afghanistan had not been consulted in advance about the impact on the ground of this particular prisoner transfer in terms of the five Taliban detainees--which, make no mistake, what our intelligence community has said is that these five detainees, the five Taliban dream team--on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely will it be that they get back in the fight against us and our allies and against our interests? Four of them, we were told, are a 10 out of 10 that they will get back into the fight.…”