Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

I strongly disapprove of torture and have never and would never provide assistance in its process.

No conditions justify torture.

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.

Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Torture of a person anywhere in the world causes humanity everywhere in the world to suffer.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict..

Torture remains unacceptable and unjustified at all times, including during states of emergency, political instability, or even in a war.

I'm against torture. I'm also against terrorism.

Regrettably, it has become clear that torture of detainees in United States custody is not limited to Abu Ghraib or even Iraq. Since Abu Ghraib, there have been increasing reports of torture.

Torture, including practices like waterboarding, violates the legal and moral standards of all civilized nations.

I do not propose that everyone in Guantanamo or its evil twin at Bagram is innocent. I just don't believe we should incarcerate people without trial and torture them or facilitate and profit from their torture.

The norm was to kill everyone who was kidnapped. And anyone kidnapped was tortured … torture didn’t always work. It left people too destroyed …Torture is eternal. It has always existed and always will. It is an essential part of the human being …. Not one innocent person passed through my hands.

54,000 Latin American soldiers graduated from the School of the Americas since 1986. These soldiers are known to commit atrocities and execute torture techniques

The abuse of civilians and combatants has existed since the dawn of time.

I think the suffering, violence and cruelty and Guantanamo and the rest is going to go on and on in Iraq.

I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team.

The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who 'disappeared'. That's what the candle is for.

Saddam Hussein wrote the book on human rights violations.

[The new Congolese] security forces committed unlawful killings, torture, beatings, acts of rape, extortion and other abuses, largely with impunity.

We Europeans do not sit at the table with torturers.

Religious pacifists were confined in unsanitary guardhouses—sometimes in unheated cells during winter months, without blankets …. Men were … beaten, pricked or stabbed with bayonets, jerked about with ropes around their necks, threatened with summary execution, tortured by various forms of the “water cure.”

And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions ... and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive

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.