On the recordJune 9, 2016
Mr. President, I will in a moment. Let me make this real to you. We will have a big debate. I would love to have a hearing. This guy pictured here is Anwar al-Awlaki. He is dead, thank God. He was an American citizen and head of Al Qaeda in Yemen. President Obama put him on the kill list, and we killed him. That is good. Well done, Mr. President. If you are an American citizen and you go to Yemen and join Al Qaeda, I hope you get killed too. If we capture you, you will have your day in court to argue that you are not part of Al Qaeda, that we have it all wrong, and the government has to prove that you in fact are. But if the government can make that argument, the last thing I want somebody like this to hear is ``Hey, you have a right to remain silent.'' I don't want these people to remain silent; I want to hold them as enemy combatants and gather intelligence. I don't want to torture them. I don't want to beat them up. But I don't want to put them in Federal court and act like it is not part of the war. I don't want to criminalize the war; I want to make sure you have due process consistent with being at war. What Senator Lee and others are suggesting is that if this guy made it to America, came back to his homeland, and we shot him on the steps of the Capitol and he survived, we would have to read him his Miranda rights and we couldn't hold him to find out under military interrogation what he knows about this attack and future attacks.…





