William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry: “I appreciate the gentleman for yielding. Now, remember, we can't have debates on serious issues regarding Guantanamo…”

“I appreciate the gentleman for yielding. Now, remember, we can't have debates on serious issues regarding Guantanamo, Miranda rights and other things. What is hitting in this blizzard of reports are several pages which say, if our intelligence professionals try to get information from a terrorist in order to prevent future terrorist attacks and if they don't give him the proper amount of sleep, our intelligence professionals will go to jail. If they do anything that violates how the terrorist sees his religious rights, without any standard of reasonableness, without any standard to judge it by--it's like, if the terrorist says, My religion requires me to have a Big Mac every day. If we don't give him that Big Mac, we are violating this provision, and our intelligence professionals will go to jail. There are provisions which say subjecting a terrorist to prolonged isolation will cause our intelligence professionals to go to jail. How many county jails and State prisons in the country could operate under this standard? I would say none. This provision will treat terrorists more gingerly than those in our criminal defense system. So, Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, what this rule does is it avoids the debates on the substantive issues.”