[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 68 (Friday, May 14, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5490-S5495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PRISONER ABUSE IN IRAQ

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to talk about the prisoner abuse in 
Iraq and how it ties into the conduct of our war there to ensure that 
we can prevail

[[Page S5491]]

in this struggle in which we have engaged. I want to begin by talking 
about a New York Times newspaper article this morning which I think 
puts into better perspective the nature of the offense that has been 
committed in that prison and then move to a discussion of how our 
troops are trained to conduct investigations at a military installation 
in Arizona, my State, and conclude with remarks that were offered this 
morning in an op-ed piece by Charles Krauthammer that I think puts all 
of this into a perspective that we would do well to pay some attention 
to.
  Let's begin with the last 10 or 12 days of discussion about what 
occurred in the prison in Iraq and how that has affected public opinion 
about the morality of our effort there. There has been a lot of 
speculation. I have urged colleagues and others to avoid speculating 
until the reports are in, until the facts are before us, because 
speculation cannot only lead to wrong conclusions, it can actually 
damage our position around the world.
  Some seem all too anxious to prove that what happened there had to be 
the result of orders from higher-ups, that it just couldn't possibly 
have been the actions of a few soldiers acting in a very wrong way; it 
had to come from higher-ups.
  It is possible there were some orders from higher-ups that had an 
effect, but sometimes there seems to be almost a desire, a hope that we 
will find it was the orders from somebody higher up, and the political 
implications of that are obvious.
  I have seen speculation that because families and friends of some of 
these soldiers, understandably, were in disbelief that their friend or 
child could have done this without being ordered to do so, that, 
therefore, is proof the order had to come from above.
  It is not proof. The defense is understandable. It may or may not be 
true. But what is becoming a little bit more clear is that, despite the 
number of photographs, these incidents appear to have been isolated, to 
have occurred on few occasions in one place by a very few people 
without having been ordered from above.
  This is the point of a New York Times article of today, ``U.S. 
Soldier Paints Scene of Eager Mayhem'' at Iraqi prison. It is the story 
of the statement given to investigators by SPC Jeremy C. Sivits who is 
under court-martial. The statement was released by a lawyer for another 
soldier. That is how the New York Times acquired it.
  The sense of the story is that Specialist Sivits described a scene of 
misconduct by a few of his colleagues:

       . . . not authorized by anyone in the chain of command and 
     with no connection to any interrogations.

  Of course, we have seen a lot of speculation that it must have been 
ordered, it must have been in connection with softening up the 
prisoners. The first clear word of what happened by someone who was 
willing to talk to investigators and admit his own culpability in the 
process suggests that is not true. Let me continue to quote:

       The soldiers knew that what they had done was wrong, 
     Specialist Sivits told investigators, at least enough to 
     instruct him not to tell anyone what he had seen. Specialist 
     Sivits was asked if the abuse would have happened if someone 
     in the chain of command was present. ``Hell no,'' he replied, 
     adding: ``Because our command would have slammed us. They 
     believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going 
     on, there would be hell to pay.

  The story goes on to note that this activity occurred at least in his 
presence apparently only on two occasions, most of it on one particular 
evening, and that at one point a sergeant heard the commotion and 
looked down to see what was going on and yelled at them in anger to 
knock it off. The story obviously concludes that this is, according to 
this specialist, a case of bad behavior by a few people who obviously 
had inadequate supervision but who were not doing this to soften up 
prisoners or doing it at the command of anyone. And, indeed, they knew 
if their commanders found out there would be ``hell to pay.''

  This is important because if it is true, what it demonstrates is that 
what we have been saying all along is right. America does not conduct 
its interrogations this way. It does not contain and handle prisoners 
this way. This conduct was an aberration. It will not be tolerated. The 
guilty will be forced to pay, and we will try to understand what is 
necessary to implement to see that it doesn't happen again.
  Secondly, if in fact this is correct, as the New York Times has 
reported, it is not just these people who will pay but their immediate 
superiors who allowed them to conduct this activity. Because even 
though those superiors may not have known about it or certainly 
participated in it, they created the circumstance under which this 
could occur. They bear some responsibility as well.
  What about the interrogation techniques? There has been a lot of 
speculation about that. First, the official U.S. Government policy, the 
official Defense Department policy, is that the laws of the Geneva 
Conventions will apply in Iraq, period. There is no exception for 
really bad guys. There is no exception in order to extract information. 
Some confusion exists because of the fact that the Geneva Conventions 
don't apply to a group such as al-Qaida. That is a fact. It is not 
something subjective.
  The reason is because by the very terms of the Geneva Conventions, 
they apply in cases where countries have signed the conventions, and 
they apply to situations in which you have an army, a military force 
that wears uniforms, that does not conduct activities against 
civilians. In the case of the al-Qaida, none of those conditions 
applies. Technically the laws of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to 
al-Qaida. That is a true statement. Because people have made that 
point, there has been then a leap to the conclusion that, therefore, 
the U.S. Government is mistreating al-Qaida. But that is not true.
  Our policy is that notwithstanding the fact the Geneva Conventions 
don't apply to al-Qaida detainees, the humane treatment called for in 
the Geneva Conventions will still be the rule, the law, the order of 
the day for our handling of those prisoners so that the same kind of 
treatment that is required by the Geneva Conventions will even be 
applied to people who are not technically entitled to the protection. 
That is our official U.S. policy.
  It is trained at Fort Huachuca, an Army base in southern Arizona, 
which has a mission, among other things, to train interrogation and 
collection of intelligence.
  Let me read a couple of items from an article from the Tucson Citizen 
of May 13.
  I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a May 14 article from 
the New York Times, a May 13 article from the Tucson Citizen, and an 
article to which I will refer, an op-ed piece by Charles Krauthammer, 
dated May 14, from the Washington Post.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From The New York Times, May 14, 2004]

      U.S. Soldier Paints a Scene of Eager Mayhem at Iraqi Prison

                           (By Kate Zernike)

       When a fresh crop of detainees arrived at Abu Ghraib prison 
     one night in late October, their jailers set upon them.
       The soldiers pulled seven Iraqi detainees from their cells, 
     ``tossed them in the middle of the floor'' and then one 
     soldier ran across the room and lunged into the pile of 
     detainees, according to sworn statements given to 
     investigators by one of the soldiers now charged with abuse. 
     He did it again, jumping into the group like it was a pile of 
     autumn leaves, and another soldier called for others to join 
     in. The detainees were ordered to strip and masturbate, their 
     heads covered with plastic sandbags. One soldier stomped on 
     their fingers and toes.
       ``Graner put the detainee's head into a cradle position 
     with Graner's arm, and Graner punched the detainee with a lot 
     of force, in the temple,'' Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits said 
     in his statements to investigators, referring to another 
     soldier charged, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. ``Graner 
     punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple 
     that it knocked the detainee unconscious.''
       ``He was joking, laughing,'' Specialist Sivits said. ``Like 
     he was enjoying it.''
       ``He went over to the pile of detainees that were still 
     clothed and he put his knees on them and had his picture 
     taken,'' Specialist Sivits said. ``I took this photo.''
       Specialist Sivits's two statements, given to investigators 
     in January and released by a lawyer for another soldier on 
     Thursday, recount the evening's activities in graphic but 
     unemotional language, portraying a night of gratuitous and 
     random violence. Lawyers for the soldiers have explained the 
     abuse captured in hundreds of photographs now at the center 
     of the Abu Ghraib scandal by saying

[[Page S5492]]

     the soldiers were operating on the orders of military 
     intelligence in an effort to get detainees to talk.
       Last night, lawyers for the other charged soldiers repeated 
     that. They said that in a bid for leniency, Specialist 
     Sivits, 24, the first to be court-martialed, is expected to 
     plead guilty on Wednesday and testify against the others.
       But Specialist Sivits described a scene of twisted 
     joviality not authorized by anyone in the chain of command 
     and with no connection to any interrogations.
       ``She was laughing at the different stuff they were having 
     the detainees do,'' Specialist Sivits said, describing Pfc. 
     Lynndie R. England, another soldier charged.
       The soldiers knew that what they had done was wrong, 
     Specialist Sivits told investigators, at least enough to 
     instruct him not to tell anyone what he had seen. Specialist 
     Sivits was asked if the abuse would have happened if someone 
     in the chain of command was present. ``Hell no,'' he replied, 
     adding: ``Because our command would have slammed us. They 
     believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going 
     on, there would be hell to pay.''
       The evening began with Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II 
     casually telling Specialist Sivits to join him where the 
     detainees were held. They escorted the detainees from their 
     holding cells and piled them up. ``Graner told Specialist 
     Wisdom to come in and `get him some.' Meaning to come in and 
     be part of whatever was going to happen,''
       Specialist Sivits told investigators, referring to 
     Specialist Matthew Wisdom.
       ``A couple of the detainees kind of made an ahh sound as if 
     this hurt them or caused them some type of pain when Davis 
     would land on them,'' he said. Sergeant Javal C. Davis 
     responded by stepping on their fingers or toes, Specialist 
     Sivits said, and the detainees screamed.
       The platoon sergeant standing on a tier above the room 
     heard the screams and yelled down at Sergeant Davis to stop, 
     surprising the other soldiers with the anger in his command, 
     Specialist Sivits said. But within two minutes, the platoon 
     sergeant left, and the soldiers resumed the abuse.
       ``Next Graner and Frederick had the detainees strip,'' 
     Specialist Sivits said. ``Graner was the one who told them to 
     strip in Arabic language.'' The detainees hesitated. 
     Specialist Graner and Sergeant Frederick took them aside and 
     instructed them again. Specialist Graner told them to sit.
       ``I do not know what provoked Graner,'' Specialist Sivits 
     said, ``but Graner knelt down to one of the detainees that 
     was nude and had the sandbag over his head'' and punched the 
     detainee unconscious.
       ``I walked over to see if the detainee was still alive,'' 
     Specialist Sivits said. ``I could tell the detainee was 
     unconscious, because his eyes were closed and he was not 
     moving, but I could see his chest rise and fall, so I knew he 
     was still alive.''
       Specialist Graner said little. He had wounded his hand. 
     ``Damn, that hurt,'' Specialist Sivits quoted him as saying. 
     After about two minutes, Specialist Sivits said, the detainee 
     moved, ``like he was coming to.'' Specialist Graner walked 
     over to pose with the pile of detainees.
       Sergeant Frederick was standing in front of another 
     detainee. ``For no reason, Frederick punched the detainee in 
     the chest,'' Specialist Sivits said. ``The detainee took a 
     real deep breath and kind of squatted down. The detainee said 
     he could not breathe. They called for a medic to come down, 
     to try and get the detainee to breathe right. Frederick said 
     he thought he put the detainee in cardiac arrest.''
       Specialist Graner, meanwhile, was having the other 
     detainees make a tower, all of them in a kneeling position 
     like a formation of cheerleaders.
       ``Frederick and Graner then tried to get several of the 
     inmates to masturbate themselves,'' Specialist Sivits 
     recounted.
       ``Staff Sergeant Frederick would take the hand of the 
     detainee and put it on the detainee's penis, and make the 
     detainee's hand go back and forth, as if masturbating. He did 
     this to about three of the detainees before one of them did 
     it right.''
       After five minutes, they told him to stop. Specialist 
     Graner then had them pose against the wall, and made one 
     kneel in front of the other, Specialist Sivits said, ``So 
     that from behind the detainee that was kneeling, it would 
     look like the detainee kneeling had the penis of the detainee 
     standing in his mouth, but he did not,''
       Specialist Sabrina Harman and Private England ``would stand 
     in front of the detainees and England and Harman would put 
     their thumbs up and have the pictures taken.''
       Asked why the event took place, Specialist Sivits replied: 
     ``I do not know. I do not know if someone had a bad day or 
     not. It was a normal day for me, aside from the stuff I told 
     you about.''
       Asked to describe Sergeant Frederick's attitude, he 
     replied, ``Same as ever, mellow.'' Specialist Harman, he 
     said, looked somewhat disgusted, but laughed, too, and so did 
     Specialist Sivits, in his own account.
       ``What part did you think then was funny?'' investigators 
     asked. He replied, ``the tower thing.''
       The evening was not an isolated case of violence, 
     Specialist Sivits said. He described another night when a dog 
     was set upon a detainee, and another when a detainee was 
     handcuffed to a bed.
       ``Graner was in the room with him,'' he said. ``This 
     detainee had wounds on his legs from where he had been shot 
     with the buckshot.'' Specialist Graner, he said, would 
     ``strike the detainee with a half baseball swing, and hit the 
     wounds of the detainee. There is no doubt that this hurt the 
     detainee because he would scream he got hit. The detainee 
     would beg Graner to stop by saying `Mister, Mister, please 
     stop,' or words to that effect.''
       ``I think at one time Graner said in a baby type voice, 
     `Ah, does that hurt?' '' Specialist Sivits added.
       Guy L. Womack, a lawyer for Specialist Graner, said he had 
     not seen the statement from Specialist Sivits but doubted 
     that his client would have hit a detainee.
       ``I don't think he was that kind of guy,'' Mr. Womack said. 
     ``He would have done it if he was ordered to do it.'' He said 
     that military intelligence soldiers were in one of the 
     graphic photographs, indicating that they were aware of what 
     was going on.
       ``Sivits, as you know, has entered a plea agreement with 
     the government, getting lenient treatment for testifying 
     against other people,'' Mr. Womack said, ``and by definition 
     if he doesn't say something negative about other people he 
     would not get his deal.''
       Similarly, a lawyer for Sergeant Frederick dismissed the 
     statement. ``Sivits is a rollover guilty plea, and that may 
     provide comfort to some,'' said the lawyer, Gary Myers. ``But 
     it has no impact upon the defense of any other case because 
     it has nothing whatsoever to do with the guilt or innocence 
     of my client.''
       Specialist Sivits's lawyer has not responded to requests 
     for comments.
       As for Specialist Sivits, investigators asked him in his 
     statements whether he thought any of the incidents were 
     wrong. ``All of them were,'' he replied.
       Why did he not report the incidents? He replied: ``I was 
     asked not to, and I try to be friends with everyone. I see 
     now where trying to be friends with everyone can cost you.''
       ``I was in the wrong when the above incidents happened,'' 
     he said. ``I should have said something.''
                                  ____


           [From the Tucson Citizen, Thursday, May 13, 2004]

                  Abuse Disgusts Fort's Interrogators


trainees taught right way to make subjects talk; students learn how to 
                     play on fears without violence

                            (By C.T. Revere)

       The abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison violated 
     all training standards for Army interrogators and has 
     commanders and students at Fort Huachuca angry and fearful of 
     potential repercussions.
       ``It's anathema. It's not what we train. It's not our 
     values,'' said Maj. Gen. James Marks, commanding general of 
     the U.S. Army Intelligence Center. ``I can't fathom who would 
     do that . . . I'm disgusted by it. Those aren't interrogation 
     techniques. That's a bunch of rogue soldiers conducting evil 
     acts.''
       Many at Fort Huachuca, home of the 111th Military 
     Intelligence Brigade, which includes the training programs 
     for interrogators and counterintelligence agents, say the 
     actions of a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib have cast a pall on 
     the Army's intelligence-gathering community.
       ``Here we are, training hard and preparing ourselves, when 
     something like that happens,'' said Pfc. Ryan Johnson, 30, 
     who will complete Human Intelligence Collector training in 
     less than two weeks. ``It's a few individuals who have taken 
     it upon themselves to act outside of what they've been 
     trained to do. It reflects on the rest of us that are 
     training to do the right thing. I was disgusted with the way 
     they conducted themselves.''
       In response to the abuse, officials at Fort Huachuca opened 
     their classrooms and training grounds to news media yesterday 
     to show how the ever-growing population of interrogators is 
     trained.
       ``We do not authorize any form of hands-on in terms of our 
     use of interrogation techniques,'' Marks said. ``We try to 
     play on their existing fears, but it is not allowed to put 
     hands on during an interrogation. The only time you put hands 
     on is when you are physically moving them from one place to 
     another.''
       Methods such as sleep deprivation, forcing detainees to 
     stand in one position for prolonged periods and physical 
     assaults of any kind are not part of the curriculum at Fort 
     Huachuca, Marks said.
       ``We train soldiers to do what's right. Our Army is values-
     based,'' he said.
       Soldiers training to become interrogators complete an 
     intensive course that runs for 16 weeks and four days and 
     teaches 14 methods for interrogating ``in accordance with the 
     Geneva Conventions,'' said Joel Krasnosky, a retired Army 
     interrogator who is the chief of the Human Intelligence 
     Collector Course.
       The first approach is to ask direct questions intended to 
     glean the information being sought, he said.
       If that fails, interrogators can offer incentives for 
     information, appeal to emotions such as love of country or 
     hate for groups or ideas, intensifying or reducing fear, 
     appealing to pride or ego or convincing the person under 
     interrogation that there is simply no point to resisting.
       Another approach calls for giving the impression that the 
     interrogators knows more than he or she does, sometimes by 
     using a ``prop'' dossier or file. Another tactic is to insist 
     the source has been identified as someone else they'd rather 
     not be.

[[Page S5493]]

       Repeating the same question over and over can break down a 
     source, as can constantly interrupting the person or simply 
     sitting silently and waiting them out.
       Once any of the approaches gets a source talking, 
     interrogators go back to direct questioning to get the 
     information they want, said Master Sgt. Steven Bohn, senior 
     enlisted instructor and a veteran interrogator.
       ``Ninety-nine percent of the time that is the most 
     effective approach,'' Bohn said. ``You've got to get that 
     information. You beat around the bush all day long. That's 
     what we do. But then you've always got to go back to the 
     direct approach.''
       All interrogations take place with a security guard 
     present, typically a member of the military police, Marks 
     said. Oftentimes, a contract interpreter is also present, but 
     he or she never participates in the questioning, he said.
       ``They are a device through which an interrogator can get 
     to the person he is interrogating. We're not necessarily as 
     good as the guy we're trying to interrogate. We admit that,'' 
     he said.
       Adherence to the military doctrine known as ``The Law of 
     War'' prevents soldiers from crossing the line even in trying 
     circumstances, Marks said.
       ``The training has got to step in so that the soldier 
     doesn't even put his finger on the line,'' he said. ``It's 
     not just physical courage. It's moral courage.''
       Better examples of military training are the two 
     noncommissioned officers, both trained at Fort Huachuca, who 
     developed the intelligence that led to the capture of Saddam 
     Hussein, Marks said.
       While physical abuse and deprivation are not part of the 
     training for interrogators, they must take measures to obtain 
     information that is intended to save lives, he said.
       ``I want them to be tired. I want them to be afraid of 
     me,'' he said. ``When they breathe, I want them to think the 
     interrogator gave them the right to expand their lungs. When 
     the interrogator enters that room, I want him to think, `Oh, 
     my God. What's going to happen next?' And I haven't touched 
     him.''
                                  ____


                [From the Washington Post, May 14, 2004]

                          The Abu Ghraib Panic

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       Democrats calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation invoke 
     the principle of ministerial responsibility: a Cabinet 
     secretary must take ultimate responsibility for what happens 
     on his watch. Interesting idea. Where was it in 1993 when the 
     attorney general of the United States ordered the attack on 
     the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, which ended in the 
     deaths of 76 people?
       Janet Reno went to Capitol Hill and said, ``It was my 
     decision, and I take responsibility.'' This was met with 
     approving swoons and applause. Was she made to resign? No. 
     And remember: This was over an action that did not just 
     happen on her watch but that she orderd--an action that 
     resulted in the deaths of, among others, more than 20 
     children.
       Given the fact that when they were in power Democrats had 
     little use for the notion of ministerial responsibility, 
     their sudden discovery of it over Abu Ghraib suggests that 
     this has little to do with principle.
       This is, of course, about politics. And for the 
     administration, the politics are simple: Cabinet members are 
     there to serve the president, and if they become a political 
     liability, they should fall on their sword for the greater 
     good of the administration.
       If that were the case here, I am sure that Rumsfeld, who 
     does not need this or any job, would resign. He should not. 
     Throwing Rumsfeld to the baying hounds would only increase 
     their appetite.
       Remember that when the scandal broke, there was lots of 
     murmuring among the chattering classes about the inadequacy 
     of the president's initial response because, for all his 
     remorseful groveling on al-Hurra and al-Arabiya, he had not 
     invoked the magic phrase: I'm sorry. So what happened when, 
     shortly after, in the presence of King Abdullah of Jordan, he 
     explicitly apologized? ``They've Apologized. Now What?'' 
     (headline, New York Times, the very next Sunday.)
       In the Rumsfeld case, the ``Now What?'' is obvious. 
     Democrats will pocket the resignation, call it an admission 
     of not just ministerial responsibility but material 
     responsibility at the highest levels of the administration, 
     and use that to further attack the president.
       In any case, the whole Rumsfeld debate is a sideshow. For 
     partisans it is a convenient way to get at the president. And 
     for those who have no partisan agenda but are shocked by the 
     Abu Ghraib pictures, it is a way to try to do something, 
     anything, to deal with the moral panic that has set in about 
     the whole Iraq enterprise.
       This panic is everywhere and now includes many who have 
     been longtime supporters of the war. The panic is unseemly. 
     The pictures are shocking and the practices appalling. But 
     how do the actions of a few depraved soldier among 135,000 
     negate the moral purpose of the entire enterprise--which has 
     not only liberated 25 million people from 25 years of 
     genocidal dictatorship but has included a nationwide 
     reconstruction punctuated by hundreds, thousands, of 
     individual acts of beneficence and kindness by American 
     soldiers?
       We are obsessing about the wrong question. It is not: Is 
     our purpose in Iraq morally sound? Of course it is. 
     The question today, as from the beginning, remains: Is 
     that purpose achievable?
       Doability does not hinge on the pictures from Abu Ghraib. 
     It hinges on what happens on the ground with the 
     insurgencies. The greater general uprising that last month's 
     panic-mongers had predicted has not occurred. The Sadr 
     insurgency appears to be waning. Senior Shiite clerics, local 
     leaders and demonstrators in the streets of Najaf have told 
     Moqtada Sadr to get out of town. Meanwhile, his militia is 
     being systematically taken down by the U.S. military.
       As for Fallujah, we have decided that trying to fully 
     eradicate Sunni resistance is too costly in U.S. lives. 
     Moreover, this ultimately is not our job but one for the 85 
     percent of Iraqis who are not Sunni Arabs--the Shiites and 
     Kurds who will inherit the new Iraq. We have thus chosen an 
     interim arrangement of local self-rule in the Sunni hotbeds. 
     And if that gets us through the transition of power to 
     moderate Iraqis, fine.
       This seems entirely lost on the many politicians and 
     commentators who have simply lost their bearings in the Abu 
     Ghraib panic. The prize in Iraq is not praise for America 
     from the Arab street nor goodwill from al-Jazeera. We did not 
     have these before Abu Ghraib. We will not have these after 
     Abu Ghraib. The prize is a decent, representative, 
     democratizing Iraq that abandons the pan-Arab fantasies and 
     cruelties of Saddam Hussein's regime.
       That remains doable. What will make it undoable is the 
     panic at home.

  Mr. KYL. The Tucson Citizen's article in part reads as follows:

       The abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison violated 
     all training standards for Army interrogators and has 
     commanders and students at Fort Huachuca angry and fearful of 
     potential repercussions. ``It's anathema. It's not what we 
     train. It's not our values,'' said Maj. Gen. James Marks, 
     commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center. ``I 
     can't fathom who would do that * * * I'm disgusted by it. 
     Those aren't interrogation techniques. That's a bunch of 
     rogue soldiers conducting evil acts.''

  Just a couple other sentences from the article:

       Many at Fort Huachuca, home of the 111th Military 
     Intelligence Brigade which includes the training programs for 
     interrogators and counterintelligence agents, say the actions 
     of a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib have cast a pall on the 
     Army's intelligence-gathering community.

  It goes on to note that ``it reflects on the rest of us that are 
training to do the right thing.'' And just one other quotation from 
General Marks:

       We do not authorize any form of hands-on in terms of use of 
     our interrogation techniques.

  The article goes on to talk about precisely what kind of 
interrogation is permitted, what the techniques are to get information. 
But it makes it very clear none of the things that have been depicted 
in these photographs are even remotely authorized.
  So it actually ties in with the article from the New York Times that 
this could not have been done by military intelligence to gather 
information from these prisoners. That is an important point because 
some have begun to question the morality of our involvement in Iraq and 
the mission which so many of our young soldiers have put their lives on 
the line to achieve, and now several hundred have died to achieve.
  One of our colleagues made the point this prison had done horrible 
things under the regime of Saddam Hussein, and now it was open under 
new management, namely the U.S. Government.
  I find that statement to be deplorable because it suggests a moral 
equivalency between what the U.S. stands for and has done and what 
Saddam Hussein has done in that same prison. We have heard about and 
seen some evidence, and I believe there will be additional evidence 
coming out that reveals what Saddam Hussein did to people in that 
prison--the torture, the rape, the murder--absolutely despicable 
actions that have absolutely no comparative value to what occurred--if 
on more than a couple of occasions--by a handful of American soldiers 
who did wrong and who will be punished for doing wrong.
  The difference between our morality and the morality of Saddam 
Hussein is it was his intention to inflict this kind of despicable 
horror, and the magnitude of it was horrific, whereas in the United 
States, we stand for exactly the opposite. We will punish those who 
conducted this kind of activity and we will make it clear that is not 
our standard. Again, the moral equivalency is so utterly lacking it is 
amazing to me anybody would even try to make that connection. This is 
especially sad in the week in which Nick Berg's death was brought home 
to us in such a

[[Page S5494]]

graphic way by the same kind of terrorists who held sway in Iraq under 
Saddam Hussein.
  This is the kind of enemy we are fighting. It requires us to take 
stock about what we need to do as policymakers in discussing this 
publicly, because the message we send to the world, to terrorists, and 
to the Iraqis in particular, is going to play a large role in how 
people view our effort and, therefore, whether it can succeed in the 
long run.
  If our leaders are criticizing our effort as an immoral effort, as 
nothing more than a continuation of what Saddam Hussein was doing, then 
it is doubtful our effort can succeed. Americans must stand up for what 
is right in this country and what they know our country to be, and we 
must make it crystal clear to the rest of the world we have a moral 
purpose, that we do have a commitment to the rule of law, and anything 
that goes outside of that rule of law will be dealt with appropriately. 
That is the difference between our society and the society we replaced 
in Iraq.
  That is very critical for us to discuss and to not have our leaders 
undercutting us and, therefore, calling into question the legitimacy 
not only of the mission but of the activities of our soldiers and 
others fighting this war.
  The third article I would like to discuss is an op-ed, actually, 
entitled ``The Abu Ghraib Panic,'' May 14, Washington Post, by Charles 
Krauthammer. As usual, it takes a person such as Charles Krauthammer to 
put this into perspective. He always comes to the rescue when 
policymakers and pundits and others begin to fly off on tangents that 
miss the point, that begin to take us down the wrong path in terms of a 
logical analysis of what is going on. He tends to bring us back to the 
central point we need to consider and discuss and the policy that needs 
to be carried out.
  His op-ed today brings us back to the central point by beginning with 
the discussion of those who have called for the resignation of the 
Secretary of Defense. He points out this exercise is what he calls 
``ministerial responsibility''--the notion that, in some parliamentary 
governments, if something goes wrong down below, the leader of that 
particular department resigns, or offers his resignation, in order to 
demonstrate the responsibility of the government. He points out that is 
not a doctrine that has held in the United States, where there is no 
responsibility of the individual involved.
  Indeed, he points out even when there is responsibility for the 
individual--the higher up individual--and that individual takes 
responsibility, it has not been the case in this country to call for 
the resignation of the individual.
  The example he gives is the one of former Attorney General of the 
United States Janet Reno, who not only was on duty when the Branch 
Davidian compound in Waco was attacked by American forces in 1993 but 
ended in the deaths of 76 people. She not only was on duty, but she 
ordered the attack, which resulted in, among other things, the death of 
20 children. That was an awful event. She took responsibility for it. 
She said, ``It was my decision and I take responsibility.'' There was 
much applause for her willingness to do that. But she didn't resign. 
She was not asked to resign. She was not fired by the President, 
notwithstanding her direct responsibility for what had occurred.
  Compare that to the case today with Secretary Rumsfeld, who, by all 
accounts, has done a tremendous job at the Department of Defense. He 
has successfully executed two wars. He is trying to transform our 
military. He is now involved in an effort to ensure the security of 
Iraq so power can be turned over on June 30; and a handful of soldiers, 
at a very low level, in a prison in Iraq commit crimes against 
prisoners somehow becomes his direct responsibility, such that he has 
to actually resign from his position in order, somehow, to demonstrate 
the morality of our position there.
  He doesn't have to do that because it was not his responsibility. He 
was responsible for saying the laws of the Geneva Conventions apply. He 
was trying to make sure everybody under his command was doing their 
duty. In no way will it ever come to pass that responsibility, in terms 
of culpability for this action, went very far up the chain. As a 
result, it is more a frustration that some people don't know anything 
else to do that they call for his resignation. Of course, there is a 
political component, too. The President's enemies use this as a way to 
get at him. One can expect that in a political environment. But it has 
severe consequences when people around the rest of the world begin to 
think this is the opinion not only of key policymakers in America but 
represents a policy that should be carried out by our Government and, 
if it is not, somehow our Government is very wrong. So there are 
consequences of the people who discuss this in that light.
  As Charles Krauthammer points out, that has never been the standard 
in the U.S. If you look to the case of Janet Reno, where there really 
was culpability, and yet she wasn't fired, or she did not resign, you 
can see this could be, in the case of many people, a political exercise 
rather than an exercise in responsible criticism.
  The point Krauthammer tried to make here is this whole business about 
Secretary Rumsfeld is a sideshow, in any event, and that what is 
happening is some Americans who are not adequately grounded in what 
this country is all about, what the war is about, are beginning to 
panic. Let me quote something and then wonder aloud. He says:

       The panic is unseemly. The pictures are shocking and the 
     practices appalling. But how do the actions of a few depraved 
     soldiers among 135,000 negate the moral purpose of the entire 
     enterprise--which has not only liberated 25 million people 
     from 25 years of genocidal dictatorship, but has included a 
     nationwide reconstruction punctuated by hundreds, thousands, 
     of individual acts of beneficence and kindness by American 
     soldiers?

  Indeed, this panic, I believe, is due, among other things, to the 
fact that America has enjoyed such success and has had to sacrifice so 
little in recent time that Americans unfamiliar with the sacrifices and 
the moral purposes of previous engagements, such as World War I and 
World War II in particular, and Korea and Vietnam, unfamiliar with the 
horror of war and the requirement of a citizenry to back their fighters 
with steadfastness and courage and support, rather than panic at the 
first sign that something is going wrong.
  This panic is due to a citizenry today that may not have been 
adequately educated to the fundamental purposes of why we are there--
and to the extent that is the policymakers' fault, I will take 
responsibility for that as well--and perhaps are insufficiently 
grounded in the kind of conflicts we have fought in the past and why it 
was so important for the citizens in doing their part to support the 
effort and not panic at the first sign that something was going wrong.
  I think of D-Day, the anniversary of which is coming up soon, and the 
terrible decision General Eisenhower had to make with the weather 
forecast suggesting a very difficult crossing of the channel, the 
predictions of German fortifications having been weakened being wrong 
so that when our troops hit the beaches, they were cut down by 
withering fire, the great number of casualties at Omaha Beach and all 
the rest where we thought it was going to go better than it did, and 
second-guessing of our generals all the way up to General Eisenhower 
would certainly have been warranted. But the American people did not do 
that, and the British people did not do that.
  Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other leaders rallied the 
American people and the British people, the allies, to support the 
cause, notwithstanding the number of casualties that were occurring, 
notwithstanding the fact that efforts were going wrong.
  This is what President Bush has tried repeatedly to do, to say: Look, 
we knew when we went into this it would be difficult, it would be 
costly, it would take a long time. I remember his State of the Union 
Address in which he said that, and it has been repeated many times 
since.
  I think one thing we all appreciate about President Bush is that he 
does have a resoluteness, a willingness to make tough decisions and 
then the courage to stand by them. But we Americans have to back him in 
that. You cannot panic when the going gets tough. And in war, sometimes 
the going does get tough.
  This is a case where it was due to our own fault. Some of our own 
soldiers did

[[Page S5495]]

something very wrong, and we have to deal with that. But that is not a 
reason to panic and believe that the effort in which the other 135,000 
are engaged is wrong or is falling apart and cannot be achieved.
  It is rather a time for us to go back to our moorings, what Americans 
believe in and what we understand was the purpose of this effort, and 
do what we can do in this effort, which is to support the effort, to 
support the decisionmakers, to support the Commander in Chief and, most 
of all, to support the troops.
  I think of Pat Tillman, who played football in my home State, who 
decided to forego a lucrative football contract with the Arizona 
Cardinals because he wanted to do his part in this effort. He went to 
Iraq and then went to Afghanistan and was killed there. He did his 
part. The challenge to us is, what can we do? We cannot go over there 
and fight, but we can sure do something to support those who are doing 
the fighting. I do not mean we cannot question. That is our job. We do 
not just meekly go along with what everybody says about this, but we 
can certainly not do anything to undercut the effort of those putting 
their lives on the line. That is what we can do. That is our part. And 
it starts with not panicking, as Charles Krauthammer said.

  Things go wrong in war. They went wrong in every war we fought. We 
practically got pushed off the Korean peninsula in the Korean war. Then 
General MacArthur, in a brilliant move in Inchon, landed behind enemy 
lines, drove the enemy back, and did what Americans always do in the 
end: We succeed when we do not panic.
  I suggest to those who are wringing their hands today about what is 
going on in Iraq to just take a deep breath, stiffen your spine, and 
remember what this country has gone through in its great history. We 
have sacrificed a lot and it has been for good, moral purpose, and such 
is the case in Iraq.
  Let me quote again from the Krauthammer op-ed:

       We are obsessing about the wrong question. It is not: Is 
     our purpose in Iraq morally sound? Of course it is. The 
     question today, as from the beginning, remains: Is that 
     purpose achievable?

  Then he goes on to say this:

       Doability does not hinge on the pictures from Abu Ghraib. 
     It hinges on what happens on the ground with the 
     insurgencies. The greater general uprising that last month's 
     panic-mongers had predicted has not occurred. The Sadr 
     insurgency appears to be waning. Senior Shiite clerics, local 
     leaders and demonstrators in the streets of Najaf have told 
     Moqtada Sadr to get out of town. Meanwhile, his militia is 
     being systematically taken down by the U.S. military.
       As for Fallujah, we have decided that trying to fully 
     eradicate Sunni resistance is too costly in U.S. lives. 
     Moreover, this ultimately is not our job but one for the 85 
     percent of Iraqis who are not Sunni Arabs--the Shiites and 
     Kurds who will inherit the new Iraq. We have thus chosen an 
     interim arrangement of local self-rule in the Sunni hotbeds. 
     And if that gets us through the transition of power to 
     moderate Iraqis, fine.
       This seems entirely lost on the many politicians and 
     commentators who have simply loss their bearings in the Abu 
     Ghraib panic. The prize in Iraq is not praise for America 
     from the Arab street nor goodwill from al-Jazeera. We did not 
     have these before Abu Ghraib. We will not have these after 
     Abu Ghraib. The prize is a decent, representative, 
     democratizing Iraq that abandoned the pan-Arab fantasies and 
     cruelties of Saddam Hussein's regime.
       That remains doable. What will make it undoable is the 
     panic at home.

  As I said, as usual, he is right on target.
  So what does that teach us? Getting back to the beginning of the 
discussion of the Secretary of Defense and his responsibility, let's be 
careful of the message we send to the rest of the world. Some of my 
colleagues have said the Secretary must resign because we need to send 
a message to the Arab world. What message is it? That we are sorry? We 
have sent that message. That we take responsibility? We have already 
taken responsibility.
  I think it sends a message of weakness. Remember what the mantra of 
Osama bin Laden is--that there are weak horses and strong horses, and 
the world will respect the strong horse. He believes he is the strong 
horse, that we are the weak horse. He cites over and over Lebanon, 
Somalia, Vietnam, and he believes that Iraq falls into the same 
category; that if his al-Qaida and their allies in Iraq can continue to 
inflict casualties on us, if we continue to have self-doubt, disunity, 
undercut our leadership, panic over what a few of our soldiers did in 
the prison, in the long run he will prevail because he is the strong 
horse and we are the weak horse. That is his entire philosophy, and it 
motivates a lot of people in that part of the world who hate us.
  The way to defeat that philosophy is to be the strong horse because 
of our morality as well as our military power, because of what we stand 
for in terms of returning freedom to people who did not have it, and 
because we do not mean to gain anything personally from it except an 
additional degree of security from terrorists.
  Mr. President, what we say matters. We need to conduct the debate 
and, indeed, a debate is entirely appropriate, but we need to conduct 
the debate in a way that will not undercut the effort of those who are 
putting their lives on the line. Sometimes even words in this Chamber 
go over the top. Sometimes words of my colleagues go over the top.
  Certainly, there are many outside of this Chamber who reveal a panic 
of the kind that Charles Krauthammer has written about, which will 
undercut our ability to carry out our mission, and that, at the end of 
the day, is the important point.
  So I urge my colleagues and all others who are discussing this issue 
to try to conduct the debate and discussion in a serious, responsible 
way that does not undercut the efforts of our leaders and our troops on 
the ground. If we do that, then we will have done our part in achieving 
victory. We will have been responsible. We will not have undercut the 
effort, and I think we will have distinguished ourselves in the one way 
that we can act to achieve victory.
  Teddy Roosevelt made a comment that kind of wrapped up what he did in 
life with all of the actions in which he engaged. Somebody asked him a 
question about his life and he said: I just have appreciated the 
opportunity that I have had to work on work worth doing.
  What we are doing today is work worth doing. We need to remember 
that, be supportive of it, and be supportive of those we have asked to 
do the work.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, are we in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

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