Torture Policy Quotes

Obama had the audacity to say, 'I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.' Ladies and gentlemen, torture in the United States has always been illegal.

One of America's greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don't torture.

Anyway, the [Barack] Obama administration took four years to say they weren't gonna do anything on George W. Bush. There were all kinds of people that wanted to prosecute him over the torture, quote, unquote, at Guantanamo Bay.

America’s policy should be to oppose torture….if you have a policy which legitimizes this, it’s a slippery slope….If you have any kind of formal exception, people just drive a truck through it.

Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.

The United States does not torture.

The Vice President is not the Vice President of Torture.

If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

The whole macho thing has to be reexamined. Because in my view, the Bush administration was weak, not strong. To engage in a policy of torture is a weak policy. Because ultimately, it encourages the terrorists. It undermines our own values. It corrupts our system. And it doesn't get good intelligence.

Not only is America a country where torture is now policy. It's now outsourced. It's given to companies at a cost-plus basis. It's a triple whammy of surreal, absolute madness.

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too.

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

Torture must only be hypothetical exception, not US policy.