Tom Malinowski Quotes (22 Quotes)

This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely,

There's not just confusion between the U.S. definition and everybody else's definition of torture, there's profound confusion within the U.S. government.

This was somebody who worked very hard to make sure the advice of senior military officials and national security professionals on the question of interrogation policies was ignored, ... The result was an unmitigated disaster for the United States.

We've seen a series of half-hearted investigations and slaps on the wrist. The government seems more interested in managing the detainee abuse scandal than in addressing the underlying problems that caused it.

We have a high degree of confidence that such facilities exist in at least Poland and Romania.

The administration is setting a dangerous example for the world when it claims that spy agencies are above the law.

If companies put up a united front and are supported by the U.S. government, they'd be in a strong position.

The cellophane is a modern addition to a technique that had its origins in the Spanish Inquisition.

China is already exporting technology for monitoring the Internet to other repressive governments -- Zimbabwe, for example. And such governments in every part of the world are now watching to see if China can bend Internet providers to its will. If China succeeds, other countries will insist on the same degree of compliance, and the companies will have no standing to refuse them. We will have two Internets, one for open societies, and one for closed societies. The whole vision of a World Wide Web, which breaks down barriers and empowers people to shape their destiny, will be gone. Instead, in the 21st century, we will have a virtual Iron Curtain dividing the democratic and undemocratic worlds.

It is illogical for companies to say they are expanding the boundaries of freedom in China if they strip their product of the very qualities that make it a force for greater freedom. These companies must protect the integrity of the product they are providing, or that product will no longer be the Internet as we know it, and will no longer have the impact on society we all wish to see.

is a wonderful way of getting false concessions out of innocent people. It is a terrible way of getting the truth out of guilty people.

It's pathetic that they're still shuttling cash to this dictatorship after it has violated every commitment it made to the United States.

It's not like these people were once considered to be a threat and now are not. These people need to be released, either in another country or the U.S. They're America's responsibility.

What is really clear is that this is a dead-end policy and they are close to the dead end.

It doesn't fix the problem that there isn't a single clear standard consistent with the law and our values, ... Even if all these documents end up establishing appropriate standards, we need to remember that what the secretary of defense does today he can undo tomorrow.

The goal should be a resolution down the road. It's not going to be easy to get because of Chinese opposition. But then again people said we would not even get a discussion of Burma in the U.N. Security Council and we proved them wrong.

And there is no way anyone could, even if the military was twice as conscientious. It is unknowable, unless you assume that every act of abuse is immediately reported up the chain of command.

They are explicitly saying, for the first time, that the intelligence community should have the ability to treat prisoners inhumanely, ... You can't tell soldiers that inhumane treatment is always morally wrong if they see with their own eyes that C. I. A. personnel are allowed to engage in it.

It is another positive sign that the administration is willing to be honest and straightforward about the shortcomings of its allies in the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia.

They've never before explicitly asserted that they need the authority to treat prisoners inhumanely. We can't think of any country in the world that has.

The administration demanded that soldiers extract information from detainees without telling them what was allowed and what was forbidden. Yet when abuses inevitably followed, the leadership blamed the soldiers in the field instead of taking responsibility.

There's a lot of public pressure to retain the language intact. At the same time, there's pressure from the vice president's office to modify it.