Pete Sessions: “I wish to thank Senator Kyl for his hard work on these important issues. He is a superb lawyer who is a senior member of…”

“I wish to thank Senator Kyl for his hard work on these important issues. He is a superb lawyer who is a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, and he has been a member of the Intelligence Committee. He understands these issues and, thanklessly, he devotes hours of his time to try to research and study Supreme Court cases to try to make sure we do the right thing here. The most important thing for us to remember is this, and Senator Kyl just said it, that the refrain we are hearing about restoring habeas rights to prisoners of war, even unlawful combatant detainees, is not so. We have not done that, and it is a matter that is quite clear. The origin of the great writ--the writ of habeas corpus--can be traced back to the Magna Carta in the 13th century. It is truly a great writ. It is truly a powerful tool for any person who is being detained to demand that someone, somewhere come forward and tell the world why they are being detained. That is what totalitarian and Communist governments do all the time. These kinds of dictators and Communists and Nazis go out and grab people and put them in jail and never charge them, never announce where they are, even. So that is not what we want to do here. However, never in the history of the writ's existence has an English or American court granted habeas to enemy combatants held during a time of war.”