Mike Conaway: “I appreciate my good colleague yielding me this time. I have just come back from Guantanamo Bay about 3 weeks ago. In…”

“I appreciate my good colleague yielding me this time. I have just come back from Guantanamo Bay about 3 weeks ago. In part of my former life, I served with the 256 MP Company at Fort Hood, Texas. That company had, in addition to traffic responsibilities at Fort Hood, responsibility for the stockade. We have asked our military, through the civilian leadership, to do two things at Guantanamo Bay: one, keep those detainees in a safe and humane manner. And we are clearly doing that. And, two, to conduct interrogations against standards set by the civilian leadership of this country to glean from these detainees whatever information they have left to help us with conducting this war on terror. Both those missions are being accomplished well. We have great leadership there, and the men and women who are serving there. Some 10,000 of our soldiers, sailors, and Marines who have circulated through, have undergone extensive training, sensitivity training, which is a phrase I hate, but training to allow them to be more sensitive to the Arab culture. Not to the Islam religion, which we ought to respect, have respect for the Koran and the religious practices, but the customs of the Arabs are respected in a way that does us honor, because we are going to such great extent to accommodate these detainees. We cannot out-nice the meanness and the hatred of our enemies. We just cannot be so nice to the rest of the world that they will say, in that case, I will not hurt you.…”