Mark Shields Quotes

One thing about Guantánamo, beyond anything else, is the commitment against all odds to allow Americans to view themselves as the good guy, no matter what the situation is.

I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm gonna make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

American political theory has traditionally had much to say about rights and little about obligation. This tendency is wholesome; emphasis on rights is the most progressive characteristic of American legal traditions, the aspect of American law and social practice that is most admired abroad and best understood at home. People unversed in legal complexity do understand that they are entitled to the right of free speech, to a right against self-incrimination, to the right of religious freedom, to the right to a jury trial, to the right to vote. The Tenth Amendment is crucial: rights not granted to the state are reserved to the people. It is not a bad thing to live in a system in which we have so many rights that we do not list them all.

The abuse of prisoners hurts America's cause in the war on terror, endangers US service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations.

We should go forward in courts and Congress with investigations into post-9/11 interrogations and the decisions leading to them.

That Dick Cheney is pro-torture surprises no one; he freely admits it.

The vast majority of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, even after interrogation, had no further intel value whatsoever.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

The military is trying very hard right now to put a better face on Guantanamo, and I think they actually have tried to rid some of the extreme versions of abuse that we have read about.

George W. Bush and his administration embarked on a full-scale assault on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law, walking away from his international obligations, tearing up international treaties, protocols and UN conventions.

I don't believe that we should limit waterboarding - or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique - if it means saving Americans' lives.

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody has severely undermined our Nation's position in the world.

The best thing we did with the Patriot Act was to sunset it. Almost 800 foreign nationals, immigrants, mostly Arab-Americans or people who looked like Arab-Americans, were arrested, put in jail, held without charges, no notification for their families and no right to counsel. That's un-American and I'll fight to end that. If we fight the terrorists who attacked us because of our liberties by compromising our liberties, shame on us.

It’s not a pretty sight when you are waterboarding anybody … I am proud of the decisions I took including the destruction of the tapes …. We needed to come up with additional techniques that would convince the terrorists that their fate was in our hands … if the tapes were seen by anybody outside of the CIA, we would look terrible

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

By 2003, if you didn't understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren't paying much attention.

When you look at the big issues post-9/11 in the United States, whether it's water boarding, warantless wire tapping, surveillance, Gitmo, black sites rendition, all of those have been legal. Nobody has gone to jail for those programs.

Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.

The First Amendment, I think, is the jewel of our Constitution.

Once you take yourself off the pedestal, saying, "It's bad for you to torture, but for us, this is our national security, so we're gonna do it". You can't live that way and the United States doesn't need to do it, it shouldn't do it, and I think a Democratic administration, whoever the democratic president is, will repudiate that kind of conduct. I think it was an overreaction caused by a lot of different strains of thought in the administration. I think it was clearly wrong and I think that repudiation, which will come from the United States, will be a key in restoring America's legitimacy.

We're going to be really ashamed of ourselves when this whole story about Guantanamo comes out. Guantanamo is a really depraved place.

From Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, international standards and the framework of international law are being given less when they should be given more importance. I am pleased that the courts in the United States are beginning to review what has happened to those detained in Guantanamo Bay. Similarly in Iraq we need to bring our strategies back within the framework of international norms and law.

If we are perceived by the rest of the world as employing a double standard in the way that we pursue the war on terror, if we are seen as imposing on other countries' nationals, burdens that we wouldn't be able to tolerate ourselves, then we sacrifice the legitimacy of the enterprise. And I don't think the world considers it illegitimate for the United States to seek to protect itself from another attack like the one we suffered on 9/11, but I think the world does think it is illegitimate to do so by sacrificing their citizens' rights and not our citizens' rights.

Sources say the Obama administration is in the 'final stages' of planning the closing of Guantanamo Bay. The way it's gonna work is, they're going to put a Radio Shack sign out front and let nature take its course.

We have laws to deal with people who defame other people's religion. We have laws to deal with people who try to blow up our citizens. We have due process. We have laws to deal with people who we capture during combat and war, but somehow Guantanamo Bay seems to be outside all that. And perhaps it's being maintained with the view to what people are talking about now, this idea of the "long war," that this is going to go on and on, and perhaps Iran is going to be next.