Jerry Nadler: “war has been declared on this country by the Islamic terrorists, and we must protect the citizens of this country. The…”

“war has been declared on this country by the Islamic terrorists, and we must protect the citizens of this country. The PATRIOT Act was an attempt in some respects to do this. But before commenting on the specifics of the PATRIOT Act, I would be derelict if I did not mention that the majority party in this House and the Bush administration have really been derelict by not dealing more directly with the threats that we face. The biggest threats we face are sabotage, bombings in our mass transit systems, sabotage of our chemical farms, our nuclear plants that could kill thousands of people, yet we do not see funds to deal with this. It is easy to be demagogic. The Bush administration does not want to throw money at the problem; they want to throw rhetoric at the problem. So we have the PATRIOT Act. I wish we had real measures to protect our mass transit systems, to protect our vulnerable infrastructure, to protect us against what happened in London again this morning. The PATRIOT Act was an attempt to do several things, some of which were very necessary. Breaking down the wall between intelligence and police information was very necessary and was in the PATRIOT Act and is not before us today because most of the PATRIOT Act is not before us today. Most of the PATRIOT Act is permanentized. It is permanent law.…”