Tom Cotton Quotes

Detain terrorists … set up detention facilities outside the United States.

We aren't using Guantanamo Bay anymore to take additional terrorists. That was the perfect facility to be able to use to extract information from people to keep the American people safe.

Guantanamo Bay is a first-rate detention facility that's kept terrorists off the battlefield and kept America safe. It's critical role in our national security cannot be overstated.

We've got fifty people at Gitmo that are too dangerous to be let go that will never go through a normal criminal trial. Let's create a new legal system, so they'll have their day in court.

I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind.

The willingness to condone some form of interrogational coercion, including outright torture in particular extreme circumstances is directly related … to the degree that one takes seriously the threat that terrorists pose to entire cities.

The military tribunals currently underway at Guantanamo Bay create a clear legal process, as affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, for adjudicating the cases of these terrorists, when possible. Those efforts would be severely undercut by moving the detainees to the United States.

Second, the facility at Guantanamo Bay is necessary to national security.

I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.

The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

The actions we took in the aftermath of 9/11 were harsh but necessary and effective. These steps were fully sanctioned and carefully followed. The detention and interrogation of top terrorists like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi yielded breakthroughs which have kept this country safe.

I want to be very clear: whenever it is possible to capture a suspected terrorist, it is the unqualified preference of the administration to take custody of that individual so we can obtain information that is vital to the safety and security of the American people.

Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

America decided we were going to stand by and let Americans die at the hands of terrorists a long time ago.

As I detail in my new book: 'Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,' there are many myths surrounding the detention of a relatively small number of top terrorists at CIA-run 'black sites' from 2002 until they were sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

And if we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and we're going to find out everything they know, because when I'm president, unlike Barack Obama, we will keep this country safe.

We will pursue terrorists everywhere. At an airport – okay, at an airport. If we catch them in a lavatory, in an outhouse, we will take them out there with their pants down.

Terrorists need no excuse to attack us here. They've shown that for decades and decades. We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay and the way our soldiers conduct themselves all around the world to include the people doing the very hard work at Guantanamo Bay.

At its height, Guantanamo's population of alleged combatants swelled to nearly 800.

I was appointed United States attorney on September 10, 2001. And I spent the next seven years of my career fighting terrorism and putting terrorists in jail.

Today, we are now deciding how do we treat those who are choosing to carry out a war against us, non-U.S. citizens who are choosing to take us to task for what we believe and who we are. In this conflict, we have to decide how we are going to try to find these terrorists.

High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country.

The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as 'enhanced interrogation tactics,' and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures.

I think the American people believe in stopping and preventing terrorism pretty much at any cost.