From a Wednesday, May 13, 2009 hearing in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts:
I have been on the Armed Services Committee where we did a very thorough investigation of these interrogation techniques and how they came about. The Levin report is a good one. It is there to be read. I will take a back seat to no one about my love for the law and the desire for my Nation to be a noble Nation. The moral high ground in this war is the high ground. It is not a location. The enemy we are fighting, Mr. Chairman, does not have a capital to conquer or a Navy to sing or an Air Force to shoot down. It is an ideological struggle, and the decisions made in the past have had two sides. We did get some good information that made us safer, but we also hurt ourselves. We damaged our reputation, and we did some things that I think were not going to make us safer in the long run if we kept doing them.
Ducks and Economics 