Prisoner Abuse Quotes

Having found the bomb we used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of thousands of young Americans.

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.

I can tell you categorically that any mal-treatment of any detainees by U.S. forces or coalition forces is totally unacceptable - that our orders have and will continue to be that we will treat everyone in our charge with - humanely and with respect.

We turned our Hotchkiss on the prisoners and made and end to them.

If people around the world knew how well people at Guantanamo Bay are treating prisoners, they would not fall prey to the accusations that some in our Chamber are making. They are all receiving judicial review.

In the wake of newly-alleged prisoner abuse this week, Senator John McCain said that continued mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is hurting the nation's image. Also hurting the nation's image: letting people drown when it rains.

Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib.

In November, they transferred control of Abu Ghraib to the military intelligence command completely; it was, after all, the center for interrogations for Iraq.

We Americans have a sense of ourselves as a moral people. We have led the way in the fight for human rights in the world. Mistreating prisoners makes the world see our moral claims as hypocrisy.

If anyone has it rough at Guantanamo, it is the guards. They are constantly harassed and threatened by some of these terrorists. Prisoners tell guards, we know where your families are. We know where your wife is, your children, and we are going to kill them.

The prison system of the United States is an unendurable disgrace to a civilized country.

The U.S. has represented throughout its history a commitment to human rights and the law - shining a light on what happened at Abu Ghraib exposes our departure from this long-term commitment. It does not, however, excuse the atrocities carried about by Saddam Hussein and others.

I have no room for prisoners.

Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight— it has put them in greater danger.

The torture and other sadistic abuses of prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come. Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.

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.

I think Guantanamo, has been synonymous with the staining of American values and American legal tradition.

There was a war crimes trial because an American prisoner had been shot trying to escape. He had obviously been recaptured and shot, and that violated the Geneva Convention.

These servants of the mighty czar are a lazy, over-bearing, cruel lot of vagabonds, who treat the outcast with the same scorn and severity they themselves receive from their superiors. It is their duty to bring so many heads alive to designated places and to account for the lost as being dead. Before leaving a poor wretch on the way, the officer in charge assures himself of the utter uselessness of attempting to take the worn-out prisoner farther. Only when absolutely beyond human aid is she or he left to the mercy of the fierce and hungry wolves

At a meeting in her office in the late summer of 2002, months before the war in Iraq, prisoner abuse at Guantanamo is discussed. Condoleezza Rice brings in Donald Rumsfeld for a meeting, and they all agree they have to do something. Nothing gets done. Did everybody understand we were going to be as tough as we could be people we thought were Al Qaeda? Is there a better way to get information, get their trust, establish rapport, try to change their views? Nobody wants to think about that. It's just, let's beat them up. And that attitude was widespread throughout the Administration.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.

I promise you, every insurgent, freedom fighter, and stray gunman in Iraq who we arrested knew the ropes, knew that the way out was to announce he had been tortured by the Americans, ill treated, or prevented from reading the Koran or eating his breakfast or watching the television.

John Kerry announced his plan for how to handle those poor naked prisoners. His wife is going to buy them all a $1,000 Armani suit.

To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status.