[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 115 (Friday, September 15, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9649-S9650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   EFFECTIVE TOOLS TO FIGHT TERRORISM

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I want to make a few observations about 
the war on terror, which certainly is an issue that has been front and 
center in the Senate and over in the House during the last few weeks.
  There are really two issues. The first is, what are the tools the 
President needs to continue to effectively defend America?
  We know that since 9/11 there have been no successful attacks on our 
country. We know before 9/11 they were at war with us. They tried to 
blow up the World Trade Center. They blew up our Embassies in East 
Africa. They blew up the USS Cole and killed 17 sailors. They were at 
war with us, but we were not yet at war with them.
  Since we have been at war with them, we have not had a successful 
attack at home. Obviously, we are doing something very skillfully and 
very correctly. A part of that is the effective interrogation of 
terrorists and the effective surveillance of terrorists. Both effective 
interrogation and effective surveillance of terrorists prevent terror 
attacks and save lives. That has happened over the last 5 years.
  Why does the President need these specific tools? Why does he need 
the bill he proposed? Intelligence leaders have said, as recently as 
yesterday, that we will have to shut down a demonstrably effective 
program without these tools. We will lose the intelligence and the 
security the intelligence provides.
  So what is next for us in debating these important issues to help 
protect Americans at home? Only one side of the argument has been 
prevalent in the last day or so. We will have an opportunity to fully 
define the two issues to which I referred. A floor debate will 
highlight important bright-line issues.
  For example, do we provide sensitive classified information to 
terrorists? There has actually been the suggestion that somehow a 
fundamental sense of fairness would require that we hand classified 
information over to terrorist defendants. That will be one of the big 
issues confronting us in the Senate.
  Do we shut down an intelligence program that we know--it's not in 
dispute--that we know has saved lives and protected Americans? Do we 
want our troops exposed to the vagaries and whims of international 
courts?
  What about this idea that we should not define Common article 3 in 
the United States? Well, Common article 3 is going to be defined. We 
know that. The only issue is, who will define it? European courts are 
now defining it. Maybe the U.S. Congress and the U.S. courts ought to 
be the final word on defining Common article 3. So, as I said, the 
question is really not whether Common article 3 is going to be 
defined--it is going to be--but, rather, who will be defining that 
article.
  Common article 3 was written back in 1949, almost 60 years ago. Some 
of its terms--like prohibiting ``outrages upon personal dignity''--are 
inherently vague. As a result, foreign courts have been filling the 
void and doing that interpretation.
  To give you an example, the European Court of Human Rights has 
declared as follows: merely having to wait on death row is ``inhuman or 
degrading treatment of punishment.''

[[Page S9650]]

That is a European court defining waiting on death row as being 
unacceptable. A European court has further said being in a cell with 
limited natural light is ``degrading,'' and that having little 
activities to occupy a prisoner is ``degrading.''
  Now, the U.S. Congress should not sit on its hands and let some 
foreign judge--some foreign judge--define the meaning of Common article 
3 in a way that most Americans would object to and which would put our 
troops at risk. That is why I support the President's position on using 
the Detainee Treatment Act--Senator McCain's act that we just adopted 
last year by a vote of 90 to 9 in the Senate--as the standard, use the 
McCain Detainee Treatment Act as the standard for defining Common 
article 3.
  The DTA prohibits ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading'' treatment as 
defined by established standards of U.S. law. That is Senator McCain's 
bill, which we adopted last year, defining what is appropriate 
treatment of detainees.
  So these will be the issues we will have to argue and discuss in the 
full Senate with all 100 Members participating. We have not heard from 
a whole lot of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle yet, and I 
know they are going to want to participate in this debate and share 
their views about whether these standards should be determined by the 
U.S. Congress or by European courts.
  What we do know for sure, without question--no ambiguity--is that the 
current program works and has saved us from terrorist attacks and 
prevented us from being attacked again at home for over 5 years. The 
President needs tools to conduct these programs effectively to protect 
Americans at home. His proposal for terrorist detainees is one of those 
important tools. We do not all agree at this point about how to go 
about this, and that is why the Senate is a great deliberative body, 
and we will have that discussion on the Senate floor. But at some point 
we will come together and, hopefully, do it in a way where the 
interrogation of detainees can continue.
  We know the Director of the CIA said yesterday that under the armed 
services bill, that program will have to be shut down. We know it has 
worked. We know it has saved lives. We need to solve this problem for 
the American people so they can continue to be protected at home, able 
to go about their daily lives in a manner they have become accustomed 
to over the years in this great, free society.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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