Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this morning I voted against the Feinstein-McCain amendment No. 1889 because I believe it represents shortsighted national security policy. The central provision of this amendment would limit the interrogation of detainees by any U.S. Government employee or agent to techniques that are listed in the publicly available Army Field Manual on human intelligence collection (FM 2-22.3), essentially codifying a portion of Executive Order No. 13491, issued by President Obama on January 22, 2009. Due to the wide public availability of this manual, this policy enables our enemies to study and dissect the methods we use to try to elicit sensitive information from them, giving them the opportunity to train against these techniques and prepare for them. Quite simply, the effect of this policy is to hand our entire interrogation playbook to groups such as the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ``ISIL,'' Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, which is a profound mistake. Moreover, this limitation is unnecessary, because Congress has already taken action to prohibit interrogation or other treatment of detainees that is ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' by enacting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. In the past, other interrogation techniques that were not publicly disclosed to our enemies, known as enhanced interrogation techniques, proved their worth in numerous instances.…”