[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 60 (Tuesday, May 10, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3088-H3090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL: WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss a vital issue that 
has

[[Page H3089]]

not received nearly as much attention as it should, and that is the 
full accountability of those responsible for the prison abuse at Abu 
Ghraib prison in Iraq and likely other abuses in other locations.
  Last week, 1 year after the shocking pictures of prisoner abuse 
became public, a military judge declared a mistrial in the case against 
Private First Class Lynndie England, and I emphasize private first 
class.
  England, one of just a few enlisted personnel charged in the case, 
attempted to plead guilty in order to receive a more lenient sentence. 
But Judge James Pohl threw her guilty plea out and the court-martial 
after determining that Private England could not have realized her 
actions were wrong. Maybe that is because exactly 1 year ago today, 
Private England told the media that she was ordered by her superiors to 
pose naked with Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
  The case has more questions about Abu Ghraib than it answers, Mr. 
Speaker. Who was really in charge at Abu Ghraib prison? Who ordered the 
torture, abuse, humiliation of those prisoners? Why have only a few 
enlisted personnel, and very low-ranking ones at that, and one 
Reservist officer been punished? What was the real chain of command? 
Were contractors involved at any point? And how did their involvement 
compromise the normal chain of command?
  According to the Christian Science Monitor, a study by the Army 
Inspector General, not yet released but reported last week by the 
media, has exonerated all senior Army officers in Iraq and elsewhere. 
How about that? Exonerated them all, except the single brigadier 
general in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq. Why does the 
Pentagon refuse to look up the chain of command, only trying to place 
blame at those at the very bottom? Does anyone really believe that 
these soldiers acted on their own?
  The Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized: ``No one at the top . . . is 
blamed for wrongdoing,'' even though the ``climate was fostered from 
the top down that tolerated, even encouraged, the abuse at Abu 
Ghraib.''
  In February, 2004, the International Red Cross released a report 
detailing dozens of serious human rights violations that occurred in 
Iraq between just March and November of 2003, including electrocution, 
forced nudity, and other lewd sex acts, forcing detainees to wear hoods 
and more.
  Who should be held accountable? First, Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld. He is at the top of my list. Personally authorized similar 
abusive interrogation techniques for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, 
Cuba, including the use of dogs for intimidation, the removal of 
clothing, the hooding of prisoners, and ``noninjurious physical 
contact.'' He ordered several prisoners in Iraq, though not at Abu 
Ghraib, to be hidden from the International Red Cross so the 
organization could not monitor their treatment. Are we supposed to 
believe that such actions at Abu Ghraib were a mere coincidence and not 
orchestrated by anyone who had the power to order from the top down?
  How about Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez? He is second on my 
list. Two Army investigations, one of which he stated he ``failed to 
ensure proper staff oversight'' of Abu Ghraib, but he has yet to be 
officially sanctioned, punished, or charged.
  Third, Major General Geoffrey Miller. According to the Center for 
American Progress, he was sent to Abu Ghraib to ``Gitmoize'' the place. 
Under his command, the International Committee of the Red Cross found 
interrogation techniques at Guantanamo ``tantamount to torture.''
  Fourth, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. When he served in that 
capacity, he advised President Bush that laws prohibiting torture do 
``not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy 
combatants'' and an interrogation tactic only constituted torture if it 
resulted in death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily 
functions.
  And last, but surely not least, President George Bush. The President 
is not last on this list for no reason. Harry Truman proudly proclaimed 
``The buck stops here.'' It would seem this Commander in Chief believes 
the buck stops far before the Pentagon, White House, or Oval Office.
  Mr. Speaker, why is Congress receiving more information on these 
atrocities from the news media than the President or the Department of 
Defense? It is because they are a part of the culture of abuse that 
starts with loose slogans like ``Bring 'em on.'' It sends that signal 
down the chain of command. They were not only operating in an 
atmosphere created, fostered, and encouraged by top echelon officials 
at the White House. They were propelled by that very behavior.
  Mr. Speaker, I include my remaining remarks in the Record.
  This Congress ought to ask for the truth.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss a vital issue that has not 
received nearly as much attention as it should--the full accountability 
of those responsible for the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison 
in Iraq and likely other abuses at other locations.
  Last week, 1 year after the shocking pictures of prisoner abuse 
became public, a Military Judge declared a mistrial in the case against 
Private First Class Lynndie England.
  England, one of just a few enlisted personnel charged in the case, 
attempted to plead guilty in order to receive a more lenient sentence, 
Judge James Pohl, a Colonel, however threw out her guilty plea and the 
court martial after determining that Pvt. England could not have 
realized her actions were wrong.
  Maybe that is because exactly 1 year ago today Pvt. England told the 
media that she was ordered by her superiors to pose naked with Iraqi 
prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
  This case raises more questions about Abu Ghraib than it answers, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Who was really in charge at Abu Ghraib prison? Who ordered the 
torture abuse/humiliation of these prisoners? Why have only a few 
enlisted personnel and one Reservist officer been punished? What was 
the chain of command? Were contractors involved and did their 
involvement skirt the normal chain of command?
  According to the Christian Science Monitor, ``for punishment, the 
military has issued either criminal or administrative charges against 
125 soldiers and officers related to 350 cases in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
It's a different story with senior military officers, however. A study 
by the Army inspector general--not yet released but reported last week 
by the media--has exonerated all senior Army officers in Iraq and 
elsewhere except the brigadier general in charge of US prison 
facilities in Iraq.''
  Why does the Pentagon refuse to look up the chain of command to 
thoroughly investigate and charge high-level military and 
administration officials, instead focusing efforts on low-ranking 
enlisted personnel?
  Does anyone believe that these soldiers acted on their own? That they 
purposely perpetrated acts that the Pentagon's own report (prepared by 
General Antonio Taguba) defined as ``sadistic, blatant and wanton 
criminal abuse.''
  The Philadelphia Inquirer correctly editorialized ``no one at the 
top--not military officers, certainly not Pentagon civilians--is blamed 
for wrongdoing. Never mind that a climate was fostered from the top 
down that tolerated, even encouraged, the abuse at Abu Ghraib.''
  In February 2004, the International Red Cross released a report 
detailing dozens of serious human rights violations that occurred in 
Iraq between just March and November of 2003. The report maintains some 
of the abuse was ``tantamount to torture'' and that methods included 
threats of electrocution, forced nudity and other lewd sex acts, 
forcing detainees to wear hoods and more.


                    who should be held accountable?

  First, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is at the top of my list. Secretary 
Rumsfeld, according to numerous reports, personally authorized similar 
abusive interrogation techniques for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, 
Cuba, including the use of dogs for intimidation, the removal of 
clothing, the hooding of prisoners, and ``non-injurious physical 
contact.'' He also ordered several prisoners in Iraq, not at Abu Ghraib 
to be hidden from the International Red Cross so that the organization 
couldn't monitor their treatment. Now, however, we are supposed to 
believe that such actions at Abu Ghraib were a mere coincidence and not 
orchestrated by anyone?
  Second, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez: Despite two Army investigations, 
one of which stated he ``failed to ensure proper staff oversight'' of 
Abu Ghraib, he has yet to be officially sanctioned, punished or 
charged. Moreover, as the Washington Post reported this week, ``Army 
intelligence officials in Iraq developed and circulated ``wish lists'' 
of harsh interrogation techniques they hoped to use on detainees in 
August 2003, including tactics such as low-voltage electrocution, blows 
with phone books and using dogs and snakes--suggestions that some 
soldiers believed spawned abuse and illegal interrogations.'' General 
Sanchez is known to have approved these rules of interrogation.

[[Page H3090]]

  Third, Major General Geoffrey Miller: According to the Center for 
American Progress: ``a Guantanamo commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, 
was sent to Abu Ghraib to ``Gitmoize'' it. Under his command, the 
International Committee of the Red Cross found interrogation techniques 
at Guantanamo Bay are ``tantamount to torture.'' ``Harsh methods'' used 
at the prison include forced enemas, sleep deprivation and chaining 
prisoners to chairs and leaving them ``to soil themselves.'' Just weeks 
after he visited Iraq, the now-infamous abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib.
  Fourth, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez: Gonzales was 
instrumental in shaping U.S. policy on the interrogation of prisoners. 
In the now infamous 1/25/02 memo to the president he wrote, ``the war 
against terrorism is a new kind of war'' and ``this new paradigm 
renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy 
prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.'' Gonzalez also 
advised President Bush that laws prohibiting torture do ``not apply to 
the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants'' and 
an interrogation tactic only constituted torture if it resulted in 
``death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions.''
  Last but surely not least, President George W. Bush: The President is 
not last on this list for no reason, Mr. Speaker. Harry Truman proudly 
proclaimed ``the Buck Stops Here.'' It would seem this Commander in 
Chief believes the buck stops far before that Pentagon, White House or 
Oval Office.
  Mr. Speaker, why is Congress receiving more information on these 
atrocities from the news media than the President, his staff or the 
Department of Defense on? Moreover, why does he refuse to acknowledge 
that either he or his immediate advisers are primarily responsible for 
the culture of abuse ``Bring em on'' spawned by their reinvention of 
prisoner interrogation policies?
  Privates and Corporals in the Army Guard and Reserves are not 
responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. They were 
only operating in an atmosphere created, fostered and encouraged by top 
echelon at the Pentagon and White House.
  Why are we not pursuing those truly responsible for these crimes? 
Harry Truman would fully assume the role of Commander in Chief--not 
just troop deployment but troop deportment and frankly, the truth.

                 [From the Register-Guard, May 9, 2005]

 Go Higher on Abu Ghraib: Top Officials Shouldn't Escape Responsibility

       Sooner or later, Pfc. Lynndie England will be convicted for 
     her role in abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the 
     infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
       Anyone tempted to shed tears over the prospect of the young 
     Army reservist spending time behind bars need only remember 
     the photographs that showed England leering as she pointed to 
     the genitals of a male captive, and as she led a naked 
     prisoner around by a leash.
       These images shamed both U.S. critics and supporters of the 
     U.S. invasion. They also had a devastating impact on American 
     efforts to win support in Iraq and throughout the Middle East 
     for the occupation and democratization of Iraq.
       It was neither surprising nor upsetting then to learn 
     Friday that the government plans to file new charges against 
     England, whose guilty plea was tossed out and her court 
     martial canceled earlier in the week. A military judge, Col. 
     James Pohl, declared a mistrial after Pvt. Charles A. Graner 
     Jr., a former guard at Abu Ghraib, testified that the photos 
     were taken for training purposes. That testimony undermined 
     England's admission that she knew her actions were wrong and 
     her acceptance of responsibility.
       But England and the the few other enlisted men and women 
     who have faced courts martial in the scandal should not be 
     the only ones to pay a price for what happened at Abu Ghraib. 
     High-level military and administration officials must not be 
     allowed to escape responsibility for a scandal that is far 
     more of their making than of low-ranking soldiers. So far, 
     Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army reservist who formerly 
     ran U.S. prisons in Iraq, is the only high-level officer to 
     be disciplined, and she rightly regards herself as a 
     scapegoat.
       Congress, which abandoned its oversight role during the 
     invasion and its bloody aftermath, should demand an 
     investigation by a bipartisan independent commission similar 
     to the Sept. 11 commission.
       Instead of starting at the bottom, as the military's 
     whitewashes have done, the panel should start at the top with 
     Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who failed to plan for 
     postwar Iraq and then failed to adjust his plans after the 
     insurgency began. Rumsfeld is the reason why there were 
     insufficient numbers of prison guards in Iraq and why they 
     had inadequate training and murky guidelines. Rumsfeld also 
     made the decision to authorize harsh interrogation techniques 
     for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and then to apply those 
     methods in Iraq.
       Next on the list should be Attorney General Alberto 
     Gonzales, who three years ago prepared a legal opinion 
     stating that Geneva Conventions protections for detainees in 
     Afghanistan were ``obsolete.'' That opinion, along with his 
     endorsement of the harsh interrogation methods, contributed 
     to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Also high on the list should be 
     Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces 
     in Iraq, who cleared the use of interrogation techniques in 
     Iraq that violated Geneva Conventions.
       The judge in England's case dismissed charges against her 
     because of testimony indicating others were to blame. England 
     should face justice. But the civilian and military leaders 
     who sent her to Iraq and who bear larger responsibility for 
     the illegal and immoral abuses that occurred there should be 
     held accountable as well.
                                  ____


          [From the Daytona Beach News-Journal, May 10, 2005]

                          Abu Ghraib Whitewash

       On Nov. 4, 2003, Manadel al-Jamadi was found dead in the 
     showers of Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Al-Jamadi was a 
     detainee who, according to a Navy SEAL testifying in a 
     military court a year later, had probably been beaten by 
     interrogators the night before. Several soldiers posed for 
     pictures besides the body, grinning and with their thumbs up. 
     Five months later CBS broadcast those images and many more, 
     including those of naked Iraqi prisoners forced into human 
     pyramids by their captors, of prisoners leashed like animals 
     or terrorized by dogs and to the seeming entertainment of 
     their American captors.
       Whether American soldiers abused detainees ``for their own 
     amusement,'' as Pfc. Lynndie England put it to a military 
     court last week; whether they did it as part of a systematic 
     policy of abuse designed to ``soften'' detainees for 
     interrogation; or whether the whole thing was ``an over-hyped 
     story,'' as The Wall Street Journal called it two weeks ago, 
     the scandal shattered what little credibility the American 
     occupation of Iraq was clinging to when it happened. The 
     hope, at the time, was that the United States would show the 
     world that it was different, that it would be accountable.
       ``Watch America. Watch how we deal with this,'' then-
     Secretary of State Colin Powell said almost a year ago in a 
     commencement speech at Wake Forest University. ``Watch how a 
     nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions. . . . The 
     world will see that we are still a nation with a moral code 
     that defines our national character.''
       There was reason to hope. But at the time, Powell and 
     others believed that al-Jamadi's death was the only one on 
     the military's prison watch in Iraq and Afghanistan and that 
     abuse was limited to a few bad apples. It turned out that al-
     Jamadi's death was, indeed, the only one--at Abu Ghraib. In 
     March, the Pentagon conceded that it was investigating 25 
     other inmate deaths it has classified as homicides in 
     American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. If that 
     many inmates have been killed in prisons and detention 
     centers under American supervision in the two countries, it 
     is unlikely that the beatings, the abuses, the tortures that 
     lead to such homicides would be limited to a few bad apples.
       Yet that's the upshot of 11 investigations and reports of 
     what went wrong. Some of the reports judged the Pentagon 
     severely and called for corrective action and punishments. 
     But it was up to the Army to act, because President Bush 
     refused to give anyone else authority to do more than advise.
       So the Army judged (and protected) its own. The Army has 
     cleared four of the top five officers overseeing prisons in 
     Iraq. It isn't clear whether it has investigated officers 
     supervising prisons in Afghanistan (with at least two 
     reported inmate deaths) or Guantanamo Bay. Of 353 cases of 
     abuse the Army investigated (the number alone belies any 
     suggestion of a limited problem), 225 are closed. Of 124 
     soldiers who faced disciplinary action, virtually all were 
     the small fry of enlisted personnel. While 17 have been 
     thrown out of the Army, seven low-ranked soldiers have faced 
     punishment that range anywhere from forfeiting half a month's 
     pay to--in one case--10 years in prison. One general, Janis 
     Karpinski, was demoted and given a written reprimand. She was 
     in charge of Abu Ghraib prison.
       That's it. That's where U.S. accountability ends. 
     Condoleezza Rice, Powell's successor at the State Department, 
     told Europeans during her visit a few weeks ago that ``bad 
     things happened at Abu Ghraib that, as the president said, 
     make us sick to our stomach. But the real test of a 
     democratic country is how one deals with those.'' The 
     sickening test result is the scandal has been lumped on the 
     back of just a few lowly soldiers.

                          ____________________