Combatant Quotes

You have someone who the United States has decided is no longer an enemy combatant and is not dangerous, and we sent him back to a country that regularly puts people in secret detention and tortures them. - Barbara Olshansky

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war. - John Yoo

What I object to is criminalizing the war. Enemy combatants, POWs have never had access to federal court before. - Lindsey Graham

We're not talking about separating two combatants, we're talking about engaging a combatant, to use deadly force, to ensure the security of the societies we're protecting. - Rob Huebert

We use them primarily as obscurants, for smokescreens or target marking in some cases. However, it is an incendiary weapon and may be used against enemy combatants. - Barry Venable

We ran a couple of large-scale operations in the spring of 2004, during which we captured a large number of enemy combatants, Our system for releasing detainees whose intelligence value turned out to be negligible did not keep pace with the numbers we were bringing in. - Eric Olson

We get people, equipment, and supplies to ports of debarkation pretty well. What has been lacking in the past was the establishment of a distribution system that addressed onward movement of material off the airfield and which generated immediate visibility to the Combatant Commander (COCOM) or the JTF Commander of the new distribution node. - Rear Admiral Marc Purcell

We are not here to say goodbye to Che and his comrades. We are here to welcome them. I see Che and his men as a battalion of invincible combatants, who have come to fight alongside us and to write new pages of history and of glory. - Fidel Castro

War hath no fury like a non-combatant. - Charles Edward Montague

Very few veterans can return to the battlefield and summon the moral courage to confront what they did as armed combatants. Wallowing in their pain and at times in self-pity, they are often incapable of facing the human suffering and death they inflicted, especially on the defenseless and the weak. They have a habit of disregarding, as they did during the war, the people who live in the lands they brutalized. Walking among the very human beings who bear the scars of war, they see only their own ghosts. - Chris Hedges