[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 7 (Thursday, January 17, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E46-E47]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 16, 2008

  Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, the provision that caused the President 
to veto the entire Defense bill simply reaffirms the original intent of 
Congress to allow victims of terrorism to hold countries that commit or 
provide material support for terrorist acts accountable. As a principal 
author of the provision, I am pleased that we were able to salvage much 
of it. But I am disappointed in the change that the President has 
insisted on.
  The President has decided that it is of utmost importance to shield 
the Iraqi Government from suits by American soldiers who were brutally 
tortured by the Iraqi Government under Saddam Hussein, as prisoners of 
war during the gulf war. The soldiers were not only starved, denied 
sleep, and exposed to extreme temperatures. They were severely beaten, 
threatened with castration and dismemberment, and put through mock 
executions. As a result, they have sustained lasting physical and 
mental injuries.
  These brave soldiers and their families have been waiting many years 
for justice in our courts. The President, through the actions of his 
lawyers in the courts, has endeavored to block their progress at every 
turn. He has even gone so far as to twist a provision Congress included 
in the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2003, 
designed to remove restrictions on providing assistance to the new 
Iraqi Government, into an

[[Page E47]]

astonishing claim that Congress somehow implicitly thereby gave him 
authority to block court jurisdiction over suits against Iraq--a claim 
that disregards the understanding of those involved in negotiating that 
provision, as well as article III of the Constitution and the 
separation of powers.
  And now, despite these new congressional efforts to help those 
soldiers, the President wants them to continue to wait--for the good, 
he says, of the new Iraqi Government. In order for the Defense bill to 
be signed, my colleagues and I have reluctantly had to amend this 
provision to allow the President to carve out the Iraqi Government 
entirely.
  It is important to note that this change does not affect rights under 
current law. The President's waiver authority extends only to the 
provisions being newly enacted in this bill; by its clear terms, it 
does not extend to current law. There is ongoing litigation regarding 
the rights of these American soldiers under current law; if the 
President exercises his new waiver authority, that litigation will 
proceed unaffected by that waiver.
  The difference is that, if the President exercises the waiver 
authority, these soldiers will not be helped by this new provision we 
wrote and passed, as we wanted them to be, and as they would be absent 
the waiver. I believe current law, properly interpreted, already gives 
them the protection they need to obtain justice. Among other things, I 
believe it is clear, despite the administration's assertions and one 
aberrational court holding to the contrary, that Congress intended the 
1996 amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to provide an 
explicit Federal statutory cause of action against state sponsors of 
terrorism for the victims. That intent is stated explicitly, among 
other places, in the House Judiciary Committee's report for the bill in 
the previous Congress, H. Rept. 103-702.
  In the face of sustained efforts by the President to persuade the 
courts to disregard congressional intent, we wanted to give these 
soldiers, and other victims of state-sponsored terrorism, another clear 
path to obtaining justice. But the soldiers who suffered at the hands 
of Saddam Hussein will not get the benefit of this other clear path if 
the President exercises his waiver authority, as we expect he will.
  And there is always a risk that the courts will be persuaded by the 
arguments of the President and his lawyers, and reach what we believe 
would be the wrong interpretation, and deny the soldiers' claims under 
current law. If so, then the waiver will have the effect of further 
delaying justice, and a very real possibility of making it harder to 
obtain at all. Because even though the waiver cannot permanently and 
irrevocably extinguish their claims, another delay may make it all the 
more difficult to gather the proof when those claims can once again be 
pursued.
  For all these reasons, we did not want to make this change.
  And when we ultimately concluded that the President was willing to 
hold the entire Defense bill hostage unless we did, we tried to limit 
the harm.
  We wanted the President to have to weigh the interests of the victims 
in justice, and make specific findings to inform us, and the victims, 
why he believes those interests are outweighed by the interests of the 
Iraqi Government, and why he believes those interests cannot fairly be 
reconciled.
  We wanted him to have to explain in those findings why he believes it 
necessary to shelter all of Iraq's assets from legal accountability, 
even when Iraq is reaping billions upon billions of dollars from its 
oil fields.
  We wanted the President to have to reaffirm those findings 
periodically, so that they would not be set in stone.
  And we wanted a sunset, to bring a definite end to what we believe is 
a manifest injustice.
  Unfortunately, we were not able to achieve these goals.
  What we have been able to do, instead, is to add a new sense of the 
Congress that the President should work with the Government of Iraq to 
get fair compensation to these victims. That is, of course, non-
binding; but it could also create a new path to justice. And I hope the 
President will take it to heart, and act on it, and that through one of 
these paths, the victims will see some semblance of the justice they 
have been struggling for these many years.
  Otherwise, I think the President will have done a grave disservice to 
these soldiers, who are only 17 in number, and whose treatment at the 
hands of our enemies, in the service of their country, calls for 
greater respect than they have been getting.

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