Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2007

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007--Continued -- (Senate - March 13, 2006)

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in expressing our sincere sympathy to Senator Inouye on his loss. He is certainly one of the finest, most respected Members of this body. He is one of the great Senators who have served here and has been a true American patriot, serving his country with such fidelity and putting his very life on the line, and nearly losing it, and winning the Nation's highest honors in the course of serving his country.

So I would just say from this Senator, and on behalf of so many of us, we are sorry to hear this news, and our prayers and support are with Senator Inouye at this time.

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, what is the time agreement?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a previous order that at 5:30 we will move to executive session and proceed to a vote on Calendar No. 520.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think back to a young Senator Inouye, serving in our military, putting his life at risk and nearly losing it for our country. One thing he had a right to expect of his Congress was, as a soldier, he would be supported in the conflict.

We are here today hearing of a resolution presented by Senator Feingold to censure the President of the United States. It is baseless. It is not sound in law, and it is not sound in policy. We, by over a three-quarters vote, voted to send our soldiers in harm's way. This Senate voted to do that. We authorized the President, in a use of force resolution, to identify those responsible for attacking us and to attack and destroy them, to use such military force as he deemed appropriate to attack and kill them. And our soldiers have been doing that.

The Supreme Court recently had to deal with the situation in which an American citizen was captured abroad, Hamdi. They caught him. It went before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the issue was whether he was entitled to a trial.

The question was, Was he entitled to a trial? The Supreme Court held otherwise. The Supreme Court said that he was a prisoner of war, and the authorization of military force authorized the military to attack and kill enemies of the United States. It also authorized them to capture them. That was incident to the use of military force.

It is quite plain that our history of military affairs supports the concept that surveilling in a time of war is incident to the carrying on of war. In the same way that we have a right to take an American citizen and lock them up in jail without trial if they are identified to be with the enemy, we can surveil the enemy's communications.

The President authorized simply this: al-Qaida conversations in which one of the parties to that conversation is outside the United States could be monitored. We know it was through those kinds of communications that 9/11 occurred. We had sleeper cells here activated by foreign communications.

It is wrong to undermine this President while we have our soldiers at war and at risk, to suggest that he has done something wrong and needs to be censured.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.

Mr. SESSIONS. I express my strongest disapproval of the propriety of this resolution.

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