John Dean Quotes

The Vice President is not the Vice President of Torture.

I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture … and we are leading this fight by example.

The cycle of impunity must be broken …. Authorities must be held responsible …. Without accountability, democracy cannot be consolidated. We will remove the veil of impunity that covers the truth.

The United States doesn't and can't condone torture. And I want to make very clear that that's the view and the policy of the administration, the policy of the president, and that he's made very clear to American personnel that we will not condone torture....Senator, under no circumstances should we or have we condoned torture.

It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal.

I will criticize President Obama on this level: it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.

I didn't plan that there'd be this awful situation in which our European governments, just to start the story off, breaking the Geneva conventions on the protection on the human rights of refugees.

Congress has taken an action now that makes it absolutely improper and illegal to use waterboarding... or any other form of torture by our military and by our other departments and agencies.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.

In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture. The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.

In Ohio, we must put fairness to people and their families first, ahead of powerful special interests.

I have personally led, witnessed, and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.

I've been concerned about ethics in government for a long time. And the problems we've had under President Trump are only indicative of the longer-term problem of the erosion of public office and government.

I look at the corruption in Albany and we cannot accept that.

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.

I haven't decided if he deserved to eat bread made out of sticks or live in a rancid puddle, probably because I haven't made up my mind whether anyone deserves such treatment, though I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Conventions is the day a person gives up on the human race.

With the right person in place, a very distressing chapter in the Justice Department's history can be closed and the process of restoring its credibility as a strong and independent department can begin.

If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

No president, not the smartest, best human being in the world can do it alone. You cannot take on this, the power that is in Washington, to billionaires and lobbyist, the military industrial complex, all of this money and power, you can't do it. You need a mass movement of American who are looking in congress and we say directly.

President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation of terrorists, saying 'We do not torture.' He added, 'We freedom electrocute.'

Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.

The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done.