[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 72 (Thursday, May 20, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H3495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SMART SECURITY AND ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, amidst all the debate about the defense 
bill, we seem to have forgotten one very, very important thing, which 
should be the driving force behind every decision we make with regard 
to Iraq. Mr. Speaker, nearly 800 young men and women have lost their 
lives as a result of the conflict. Eight hundred.
  We must never forget that people are dying as a result of the 
decisions of this House. Many of our brave soldiers will never again 
walk this Earth because of the choices we have made. Many more will be 
lame for life. Clearly, something is wrong with our Nation's policies 
when 800 of our soldiers have died in Iraq, most of them after our 
flight-clad President declared an end to major combat operations.
  Something is most certainly wrong when events occur such as the 
abuses in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or even events like the deaths of 
five Iraqi prisoners in war-torn detention camps, as the Denver Post 
recently reported. The fact that these actions occurred in separate 
places, under the command of different interrogators, demonstrates that 
this is a systemic problem.
  The Pentagon's response has been to court-martial the young soldiers 
directly responsible for these instances of torture, calling them bad 
apples. And what has been the response by the leaders of this country? 
Two weeks ago, President Bush appeared on Arab television condemning 
the abuses by American servicemembers and private American contractors. 
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the Senate and 
House Committee on Armed Services for the same purpose. Both men in 
their respective addresses tried to distance themselves from the 
crimes.
  Mr. Speaker, President Harry Truman made famous the quote ``The buck 
stops here.'' President Bush would be well served to take notice of 
this quotation, which President Truman thought was so important that he 
kept it as a sign on his desk in the Oval Office.
  In fact, it is becoming more apparent every day that all along both 
President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld may have known more than they 
were letting on and that the crimes committed at the prisons could have 
originated in the Pentagon and passed through the Oval Office.
  An investigation by Newsweek magazine provides evidence that 
President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General John 
Ashcroft, may have personally agreed to a secret system of detention 
interrogation designed to circumnavigate the Geneva Conventions. This 
information was substantiated by a New Yorker magazine article, which 
similarly detailed a Pentagon operation known inside the intelligence 
community as Copper Green, which encouraged physical coercion and 
sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an attempt to produce 
intelligence about the post-war insurgency in Iraq.
  Are we really to believe that the Secretary of Defense had no 
knowledge of the actions being taken by the soldiers under his command? 
And if the Secretary of Defense had absolutely no knowledge of this 
abuse, is that not a gigantic problem in and of itself? And if 
Secretary Rumsfeld did know of Copper Green, are we really to believe 
that nobody shared this information with the President? And if not, why 
not?
  The buck stops with the Commander in Chief, the President of the 
United States. The buck does not stop with the young soldiers 
interrogating Iraqi prisoners. The buck does not stop with Brigadier 
General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. general in charge of running the 
prisons in Iraq. The buck does not even stop with Donald Rumsfeld, the 
Secretary of Defense. The buck stops with the President and only with 
the President.
  There has to be a better way, because the Bush doctrine of passing 
the buck has been tried and it has failed. It is time for a new 
national security strategy, one that emphasizes brains instead of 
brawn, one that is consistent with the best American values.
  I have introduced H. Con. Res. 392, legislation to create a SMART 
security platform for the 21st century. SMART stands for Sensible 
Multilateral American Response to Terrorism. SMART treats war as an 
absolute last resort. It fights terrorism with stronger intelligence 
and multilateral partnerships. It controls the spread of weapons of 
mass destruction with a renewed commitment to nonproliferation. And it 
aggressively invests in the development of impoverished nations with an 
emphasis on women's health and education.
  The buck stops with the President of the United States. No more 
denials, no more passing the buck.

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