Political Quotes

“The Senator is correct. But here is what we are doing. Here is what Lindsey Graham is doing, and Carl Levin, and an overwhelming number of the Members of this body are about to do. We are about to pass a defense authorization bill that increases military pay, that has a lot of great things. But we are about to say as a Congress: We believe we are at war, and we reject the idea--the Libertarian idea; who are great Americans--that if you get to America somehow, it is no longer a war. I think the Libertarians agree that if you catch an al-Qaida operative, including an American citizen, overseas, we do not have to read them their rights, and we do not have to give them a lawyer. But somehow, the perverse logic is, if they make it to America to attack us, whether they are a citizen or not, somehow they get a special deal. All of us who are voting for this bill say that is crazy; we are at war. For no other war has that been the case. If you would have suggested in 1942 that the American citizen helping the Nazis commit sabotage against the United States had a special status and could not be treated in the fashion of a military threat to the country, they would have run you out of town. So we are 10 years out from the attacks of 9/11, and here is what we are rejecting: We are rejecting the criminalization of the war, but we are doing it in a smart way. We are not telling the executive branch they have to go into a law-of-war detention system.…”