Political Quotes

“Now, over time, we are going to learn more about what these memos tell us, but basically these memos are telling us that the proposed interrogation techniques dealing with the war on terror, suggested by the Department of Justice, sent over to Department of Defense, were such a deviation from the normal way of doing business that it would get our own people in trouble. It was such a deviation from the normal way of doing business that we would lose the moral high ground in fighting the war on terror. General Rives sums up: Finally, the use of the more extreme interrogation techniques simply is not how the U.S. armed forces have operated in recent history. We have taken the legal and moral ``high-road'' in the conduct of our military operations regardless of how others may operate. Our forces are trained in this legal and moral mindset beginning the day they enter active duty. It should be noted that [the] law of armed conflict and code of conduct training have been mandated by Congress and emphasized since the Viet Nam conflict when our POWs were subjected to torture by their captors. We need to consider the overall impact of approving extreme interrogation techniques as giving official approval and legal sanction to the application of interrogation techniques that U.S. forces have consistently been trained are unlawful.…”