[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 64 (Monday, May 10, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      DEPLORING ABUSE OF PERSONS IN UNITED STATES CUSTODY IN IRAQ

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 6, 2004

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H. Res. 627.
  We could have passed a resolution with unanimous support today. 
American abuses of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison are 
deplorable. They are inhumane. They are immoral. They are inimical to 
everything America stands for. We universally condemn them.
  And there is also unanimous support that every perpetrator of these 
crimes must be punished, that their superiors must be held accountable, 
and that our government must ensure that such atrocities never happen 
again.
  This resolution would not be on the floor today, and our 
international standing would not be in tatters, if the administration 
had acted differently. The administration's instinct to ignore bad news 
and suppress evidence of mistakes is fundamentally wrong. It is telling 
that just a few days ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers, 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they hadn't even read 
Major General Taguba's March 9 damning report on the abuses.
  This administration has failed the military, the American people, the 
Iraqi people, and the international community. A congressional 
investigation is critical to get to the bottom of this scandal and to 
attempt to salvage what is left of our standing in the world.
  That is why H. Res. 627 is so disappointing. We were presented with a 
resolution that ``urges'' the Secretary of the Army to investigate 
abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and ``reaffirms the need for Congress to be 
frequently updated.''
  This resolution asks the Bush administration to investigate itself. 
Yet this is an administration that does not even acknowledge mistakes, 
let alone accept responsibility to correct them. It has never found the 
person responsible for leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent to 
the press. It took no action against Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy 
under secretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting, for his 
egregious anti-Muslim statements. It responded to Richard Clarke's 
revelations with an all-out assault on his character and reputation. To 
this day, the administration has not accounted for its use of bad 
intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, including the fabricated 
claims that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Niger.
  In effect, this resolution abdicates Congress' institutional 
oversight responsibilities. This is a profound mistake. Just think how 
different our situation would be today if Congress had not relinquished 
its constitutional obligation to investigate the administration's many 
Iraq policy failures.
  The resolution neatly concludes--without evidence--that only ``a 
handful of individuals'' are involved in prisoner abuse. But none of us 
knows how many individuals were involved or how high up the chain of 
command they go.
  This resolution also fails to mention the two private companies, CACI 
International and Titan Corporation, which have contract employees at 
Abu Ghraib prison. According to accused soldiers, civilian contractors 
conducted interrogations and ``urged military police . . . to take 
steps to make prisoners more responsive to questioning.'' One of the 
soldiers has claimed that civilian contractors were involved in an 
interrogation that left a prisoner dead. Military investigators have 
said that a CACI instructor was fired for allowing or instructing 
military police to ``facilitate interrogations by setting 
[unauthorized] conditions.'' And in his damning report, Major General 
Antonio Taguba concluded that two CACI employees were among those 
``either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu 
Ghraib.''
  Yet the resolution simply ignores these facts and the serious 
implications they raise.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership could have achieved a 
unanimous vote in a constructive, bipartisan effort if it had chosen 
to. But instead it decided to put before the House a resolution asking 
this administration to hold itself accountable. That is simply the 
wrong approach.
  Congress must accept its constitutional duties and conduct a thorough 
investigation. And we must work as hard as we can to try to begin to 
repair the damage that has been done.

                          ____________________