My thesis was a defense of our Constitution on the terms that the founding fathers wrote specifically in the Federalist Papers. They hoped that our form of government would draw forward men and women who are the wisest, most prudent, and most experienced.
President Obama likes to say Guantanamo Bay is a terrorist recruiting tool, and while that may be an easy excuse, it's simply not true. The reality is the motivations of radical Islamic jihadism existed before Guantanamo Bay. The ideology is premised on a narrative of conquest, in the spiritual as well as the earthly world.
Information obtained from detainees at Guantanamo has been described by the CIA as 'the lead information' that enabled the agency to recognize the importance of a courier for Usama bin Laden, a crucial understanding that led to Bin Laden's secret hideout in Pakistan and the U.S. raid that killed him.
What I believe is that a lot of the NSA's telephone metadata program is the result of misinformation spread by a traitor, Edward Snowden.
Donald Trump, like most Americans, like most Republicans, believe in protecting America's core national interests.
With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012-2013 from a position of strength, not a position of weakness. The secret negotiations in Oman. This ultimately led to the Joint Plan of Action of November 2013.
I don't believe we should allow thousands of violent felons to be released early from prison, nor do I believe we should reduce sentences for violent offenders in the future.
Our goal is simple: to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Are we fighting too many wars? And I would say no. We're fighting one war. And it's a war against radical Islamic Jihad.
You never know what kind of challenges are going to be thrown in your way or opportunities will arise.
If Iran wants their money back and wants to be treated like a normal nation, they need to act like a normal nation.
The world probably wishes that Great Britain had rebuilt its defenses and stopped Germany from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936.
Hillary Clinton exposed our nation's most sensitive national security secrets to foreign adversaries.
The acronym ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But increasingly, we see that it's not limited there. We see it in Egypt. We see it in Libya. We see it in Afghanistan.
No man wants more war if he's planned memorial services for fallen comrades, carried their flag-draped caskets off a plane, and buried them at Arlington National Cemetery.
Jimmy Carter proposed withdrawing the troops from South Korea. He was stopped by the United States Congress.
We need to quit appeasing our adversaries, and we need to stand with our allies.
In our globalized world, our domestic prosperity depends heavily on the world economy, which, of course, requires stability and order. Who provides that stability and order? The U.S. military.
The use of encrypted communication and data storage to shield terrorist coordination from intelligence and law-enforcement authorities is known as 'going dark.'
Our warriors and their families don't ask for much. But there are a few things we'd like. A commander-in-chief who speaks of winning wars and not merely ending wars, calls the enemy by its name, and draws red lines carefully but enforces them ruthlessly.
I will say that there are genuine and serious concerns about what Hillary Clinton did before the Benghazi attacks, during them, and after them. I think her extremely careless handling of classified information, to use FBI Director Jim Comey's term, disqualifies her from being president.
What I can do as the member of the United States Senate is try to do everything I can to keep America safe.
Why would you codify a set of safeguards you might want to change as technology evolves and you face new risks of privacy, in addition to changing safeguards that might need to be relaxed in an emergency situation?
My heart goes out, as does every American, when I see the videotape of Jason Rezaian and Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini coming back to their families.
I'm not going to respond to every single thing that Donald Trump has to say or that Hillary Clinton says.
The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries - the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan - do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it.
The forces that led to radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, can ultimately only be defeated by moderate Muslims around the globe, countries like U.A.E. that have led the fight within their own border to promote tolerance.
It's humiliating for Barack Obama and, therefore, the United States to have American sailors held hostage during his final State of the Union.
We're not responsible for the domestic security of every one of our allies.
We need to be tough once again in the world.
I and many other senators, Republican and Democrat, have expressed our sincere and long-held intent that Congress must approve any nuclear deal with Iran for months.
The Middle East and South Asia have a lot less in common with America than 18-year-old kids in Boston have with 18-year-old kids in Arkansas.
I was in Iraq in the worst period, 2006, but from 2006 to 2008, and especially through 2011, the American military and the government of Iraq made huge strides in making that country a source of stability with a relatively representative government that was seeking pluralistic engagement from all the factions within the government.
Two-thirds of the American people realize just how bad the nuclear deal is with Iran.
Our national-security strategy must drive our military budget, rather than the budget setting our strategy.
Trying to balance the budget through defense cuts is both counterproductive and impossible.
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.
We have to remain vigilant, and we have to continue to take the fight to the terrorist.
Donald Trump can ultimately make the case for himself.
I can't comment on what every single presidential candidate is saying or doing.
It's important to remember that whatever the presidential candidates of either party say, they will have to interact with the United States Congress, particularly the Senate, when it comes to crafting policy... we play an important role. And I'm going to continue to play that role, whoever is president.
It's the job of the president to negotiate, but it's the job of Congress to approve.
I joined the army after 9/11, after the Iraq war was started. I joined in part because I wanted to go fight on the front lines.
I learned one of the very important lessons in life in the 9/11 attacks. It's good to have a plan for your future; it's even better to write your plan in pencil.
The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime. It's simply impossible.
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.
Police officers put the badge on every morning, not knowing for sure if they'll come home at night to take it off.
I run a lot every morning.
Under the cover of encryption, terror masterminds provide recruits with the tactics and tools necessary to carry out attacks using small arms and explosives. None of this requires any overseas travel.
