[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 22, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H4668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE CIA'S QUESTIONING WORKED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, these pictures I have here are to 
remind my colleagues of what's happened to the United States in the 
past by terrorist attacks.
  This first one is the Pentagon of the United States. Several hundred 
people were killed. There's a memorial over at the Pentagon that shows 
that these people gave their lives on the plane and in the Pentagon for 
this country, a terrorist attack on 9/11.
  This here is the World Trade Center. More people were killed in this 
attack than any attack in the history of the United States by an enemy. 
Even the attack on Pearl Harbor didn't even come close to this, 
although that was a terrible thing as well.
  And this here, just to let you know that the worldwide threat of 
terrorism by al Qaeda is worldwide, this is what happened to a train 
where they set a bomb off in Spain by al Qaeda. That was in Madrid.
  Now, the reason I bring this up is because the President of the 
United States, in just the last few days, said that the techniques that 
we have used to extract information from terrorists is something that 
we in the United States should not use. There are many of us in the 
body who believes that we should use any technique possible, as long as 
it is not completely inhumane, to extract information from these 
terrorists so that they don't do these things to American citizens.
  Now, many of my colleagues, I understand they're humanitarians and 
they don't want to do things to people that shouldn't be done. But 
we're talking about killing Americans. Killing Americans. And these 
terrorists have no compunction whatsoever about killing Americans.
  I have over here that I am not going to show tonight where they have 
cut the heads off of Americans and held them up, and where they've cut 
the heads off of Americans and hung them from an overpass so that 
everybody driving by could see them. And yet, the administration is 
saying, you know, that we shouldn't use tactics such as waterboarding 
in order to extract this information from terrorists.
  Now, there is a man named Khalid Sheik Mohammed who was the 
mastermind of the September 11 attack on the United States of America. 
He was waterboarded several times. And he said that he didn't think the 
United States of America--and others that were waterboarded, there were 
three of them that I recall--they didn't think the United States and 
the citizens of this country had the intestinal fortitude, the guts, 
necessary to do what was necessary to stop terrorist attacks. And so we 
used waterboarding on them. That's where they put a board on them and 
pour water over you to give you the sensation that feels like you're 
drowning, and you keep doing it until they give up the information that 
they want. He finally gave up the information.
  The information that he gave up was there was going to be another 
attack in Los Angeles, and it was going to be similar to the attack on 
the World Trade Center, and it was going to be the Library Tower in Los 
Angeles. And the only reason he gave up that information was because he 
was waterboarded.
  Now, you know, nobody wants to be waterboarded. We had a newsman that 
was waterboarded to show what it was like. He said it was terrible, it 
was horrible, but he survived, and he was showing what it was all 
about. And every time they did waterboarding, they had a doctor right 
there to make sure the person would survive. It was done just to elicit 
information from them that would save American lives.
  And the only time they did it, the only time they used these 
``enhanced techniques of interrogation'' was when they thought it was 
going to be imminent that the United States was going to be attacked, 
and they only did it three times that I know of. And every time it was 
necessary, and every time it ended up with results that saved American 
lives.
  And yet the President of the United States said, ``We're not going to 
do that any more because it is not something that we in America approve 
of.''
  In my opinion, if we're going to save American lives, we ought to do 
whatever is necessary to save American lives. We went to war with Japan 
and Germany because Americans were being killed. And millions of people 
died in that war because of the attack on Pearl Harbor and because of 
what Nazi Germany did. And yet we can't use waterboarding, a technique 
to get information from terrorists, to stop things like this?
  You know, I don't mind being good-hearted but not where the lives of 
good Americans are concerned.
  And there are other times where they got information from the 
terrorist organizations here in the United States that were planning an 
attack.
  Vice President Cheney--who is being vilified all the time anymore--he 
was on television the last two nights and he said that while they are 
stopping waterboarding and saying that anybody that used that technique 
is a horrible person, he said he had seen documents that showed that 
the waterboarding was effective in saving American lives and stopping 
attacks like the World Trade Center and the one that was going to take 
place in Los Angeles. He said he saw those documents. And yet the White 
House released documents that showed that there were these tactics used 
to get information but they didn't show--they didn't release the 
documents that showed that it was effective in stopping the attack in 
Los Angeles, California.
  My time is up, folks. I'll be back tomorrow night.

                          ____________________