Michele Bachmann Quotes

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

In my opinion the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe.

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.

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.

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.

Renditions before and since 9/11 share some basic features. They have been conducted lawfully, responsibly and with a clear and single purpose: Get terrorists off the street and gain intelligence on those still at large. Our detention and interrogation programs flow from the same inescapable logic.

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

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 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.

Guantanamo Bay houses enemy combatants ranging from terrorist trainers and recruiters to bomb makers, would-be suicide bombers, and terrorist financiers.

President George W. Bush's aggressive war on Islamic terrorism produced a 100 percent perfect track record of keeping the United States safe from another attack. The result has been increased security for the American people, who, in turn, have become complacent about the true nature of the threat.

In my book, I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal, necessary and saved lives.

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.

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

To the American people … nine years after 9/11, nine years of spending, and nine years of beefing up security you are still unsafe even in the holiest and most sacred of days to you, Christmas Day….

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.

The American public should know that the Senate report actually reveals that 82% of detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation did, in fact, produce intelligence that saved American lives.

The war in Afghanistan is too important to be reduced to a political football. We are fighting there to protect our national security. We are confronting the Taliban-led insurgency to prevent terrorists returning to that country.

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

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.

Killing terrorists is cheaper than capturing them.

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 war in Iraq, the abuse of detainees, electronic eavesdropping, Guantanamo Bay - these things were all done on our behalf and they may turn out in the end to have created more terrorists.

We will never win this war until we understand the effect that Guantanamo Bay has had on the overall war effort. And we'll never get the support of the American people if we can't prove to them that these folks that we're dealing with are not common criminals. We're going to keep them - keep you safe from them.

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