Political Quotes

On the recordSeptember 15, 2016
I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the most interesting thing about this debate is that, as we have moved on from speaker to speaker, the proponents of this legislation keep saying the same things over and over again that simply are not true. Again, I just want to close by saying I wish we could debate this on the actual facts, on what is in front of us. There certainly is an argument to be made that we should err on the side of just locking them up no matter what. I think that is the wrong argument. I think Mr. Nadler has very clearly articulated why, as a country, we shouldn't do that, we shouldn't pick people up and say, if there is any possibility we might be wrong, we are just going to take away your freedom and lock you up without due process. It is a violation of the fundamental principles of our country. We could at least have that debate. But we keep hearing a number of things that simply are not correct. Number one, this is just the President trying to fulfill a campaign promise to close down Guantanamo Bay and get everybody out of there before he leaves office. That is completely wrong. There are 41 people at Guantanamo Bay who this administration has said under no circumstances are they transferable. Those are the worst of the worst, and they are not talking about transferring them. What we are talking about are the 20 people who have been deemed transferable.…
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Adam Smith
Democratic · Washington

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