Senator and presidential candidate Lindsey Graham did not hold back when it came to his comments about convicted Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In fact, he asked President Obama’s administration to consider Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant“:
This man, in my view, should be designated as a potential enemy combatant and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that may exist that he has knowledge of, and that evidence cannot be used against him in trial. That evidence is used to protect us as a nation. Any time we question him about his guilt or innocence, he’s entitled to his Miranda rights and a lawyer, but we have the right under our law I’ve been a military lawyer for 30 years to gather intelligence from enemy combatants. And a citizen can be an enemy combatant.
Graham’s proposal involved potentially holding Tsarnaev prisoner without ever having a trial. He believed this was necessary because Tsarnaev’s actions were likely part of a pattern and that he may have had knowledge of other planned terrorist attacks.
