[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 13 (Thursday, January 22, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S780-S781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EXECUTIVE ORDERS

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, today is a very significant day for the 
rule of law in the United States of America, and a powerful statement 
that the United States again stands for the time-honored principles and 
values that have made us a beacon to the world.
  This morning, the President of the United States signed Executive 
orders ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison within a year; 
suspending all military commissions at Guantanamo Bay; closing secret 
third-country prisons; and placing interrogation in all American 
facilities for all U.S. personnel under the guidelines of the Army 
Field Manual.
  In a season of transformational changes, these are among the most 
profoundly meaningful because they will sustain the long-term health of 
the most cherished ideals of our Republic: respect for the rule of law, 
individual rights, and American moral leadership.
  The threat our Nation faces from terrorism is all too real. And we 
should all agree that sometimes, in the name of national security, it 
is necessary to make difficult ethical decisions to protect the 
American people.
  However, I believe that the use of torture and indefinite detention 
have not only tarnished our honor but also diminished our security. In 
this global counterinsurgency effort against al Qaida and its allies, 
too often our means have undercut our efforts against extremism. In 
this struggle, the people are the center of gravity. And too often we 
have wasted one of the best weapons we have in our arsenal: the 
legitimacy we wield when we exercise our moral authority.
  Efforts to justify, explain away, or endorse the use of torture have 
played directly into a central tenet of al Qaida's recruiting pitch: 
that everyday Muslims across the world have something to fear from the 
United States of America. From Morocco to Malaysia, people regularly 
hear stories of torture and suicide at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and 
other overseas prisons. The result has been a major blow to our 
credibility worldwide, particularly where we need it most: in the 
Muslim world.
  Torture and lawlessness are not easily contained. Once the strictures 
are loosened, the corner-cutting practices spread. The Pentagon used 
high-level Guantanamo detainees to test coercive interrogation 
techniques, but such techniques eventually found their way to low-level 
detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. While images of Abu Ghraib have 
long faded from American minds and media, they remain fixtures, years 
later, across the Arab and Muslim world.
  As Senator McCain has argued, the use of techniques like 
waterboarding--invented in the Spanish Inquisition and prosecuted by 
the American Government as a Japanese war crime after World War II--
leaves its scars on a democratic society as well. Torture, which 
flourishes in the shadows, depends on lies--not just from those who 
seek to avoid torture, but from those who seek to conceal it. After 
years of Orwellian denials and legalistic parsing, what a relief it was 
to hear our new Attorney General-designee Eric Holder finally 
acknowledge on behalf of the United States Government what we all know 
to be true: that yes, ``waterboarding is torture.''
  As we move forward, President Obama is wise to ``reject as false the 
choice between our safety and our ideals''--but moving beyond this 
framework does not mean that this administration will not face real and 
difficult choices about how best to keep Americans safe while honoring 
our values.
  The American people should know that closing Guantanamo will not be 
easy. Conceived to be outside law, reclaiming the prison and its 
inhabitants

[[Page S781]]

into our legal system from what Vice President Cheney called ``the dark 
side'' will be an enormous challenge and a thicket of thorny legal and 
policy issues.
  However, we are already seeing the international system reorganize 
itself around an America that is willing to be a moral leader. 
Countries such as Portugal and Ireland have made welcome offers to join 
Albania in resettling detainees who cannot be returned to their home 
countries. Already we are seeing the fruits of a good-faith effort with 
our allies.
  Still, it will take time and effort to overcome numerous hurdles. The 
new administration faces tough challenges handed over from the previous 
administration. Looming questions must be addressed about the 
inadmissibility of evidence improperly coerced. It is difficult or 
impossible in some cases to return detainees--including many cleared 
for departure--who would face torture or worse in their home countries; 
and we already know that some released from Guantanamo have returned to 
the battlefield. In some cases we simply lack evidence to charge men we 
know to be extremely dangerous and threatening to the American people. 
And we owe it to those we believe made grave mistakes to acknowledge 
the urgency of the moment they inherited, the sacred responsibility to 
protect American lives, which they strove to honor, and the humbling 
reality that there are no easy answers when it comes to such life-and-
death matters.
  But the American story is one of perfectibility and striving for 
ever-greater fidelity to our ideals--it is a journey from Colony to 
Republic, from slavery to freedom, from sexism to suffrage, from stark 
poverty to shared prosperity. The President himself famously said, 
``the union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has 
shown that it can always be perfected.''
  It is true that today we face unprecedented, unorthodox, and vastly 
destructive enemies that respect neither borders nor rules of war. But 
it is equally true that we have done so before. This is not the first 
new challenge America has evolved to meet. Sometimes that evolution 
requires us to admit mistakes, learn from them and grow as a nation. 
Our progress in response to new threats and new fears has been halting 
but real, and our setbacks have always been followed by a strong 
corrective impulse. The desire to do better has always been a core part 
of America's greatness.
  Today Barack Obama and his administration wrote a new chapter in that 
old story. I commend them and look forward to helping them make good on 
their goals, keep Americans safe, and usher in a new era of America's 
moral leadership.
  Today's Executive orders were a promising sign of things to come--
America will again honor the values that make us strong.

                          ____________________