Dick Cheney at the West Point graduation ceremony on 5/26/07:
Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.
Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows
that they are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.
Senator Patrick Leahy from ‘The Murder of Maher Arar’:
“Oh…Mr. Attorney General, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to treat this lightly, WE KNEW DAMNED WELL IF HE WENT TO CANADA HE WOULDN’T BE TORTURED, HE’D BE HELD AND INVESTIGATED. AND WE KNEW DAMNED WELL THAT IF HE WENT TO SYRIA HE’D BE TORTURED, AND IT’S BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THIS COUNTRY, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know, that has happened a number of times in the last five years by this country. It is a black mark on us.