[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 129 (Monday, September 14, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9321-S9322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, last Friday was the eighth anniversary of 
the September 11 terrorist attacks, and we solemnly remembered the 
thousands of innocent lives, of many nationalities and religions, that 
were so cruelly and indiscriminately destroyed on that infamous day. It 
was a defining moment for our country, and since then we have sought to 
address the shocking intelligence and security failures that enabled 
the perpetrators to so brazenly enter this country and carry out those 
attacks, as well as to track down the masterminds of that atrocity and 
to destroy al-Qaida and other terrorist networks that have become a 
global menace.
  We all recognize the threat that violent extremists pose to 
Americans, as well as to citizens of other countries, and the 
imperative of countering it. This should not be a matter of partisan 
politics, but of working together in a common purpose for the sake of 
law abiding people everywhere. I supported many of the initiatives of 
the Bush administration, as I have the Obama administration, to make 
our borders more secure, to improve our intelligence gathering, to 
track down terrorists and bring them to justice.
  But there have been strong differences over what tactics to use, and 
the effectiveness of military force to combat violent extremism in 
countries where we are widely seen as invaders or occupiers. No issue 
has generated more

[[Page S9322]]

controversy than the Bush Administration's abuse of detainees, whether 
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Bagram prison in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, 
other secret detention facilities around the world, or through the use 
of ``extraordinary rendition'' whereby prisoners were secretly 
delivered to the custody of foreign security forces whose use of 
torture was well documented.
  These policies and practices, conceived and supported at the highest 
levels of the Bush administration, justified by Department of Justice 
lawyers who made a mockery of the law, and steadfastly defended as 
recently as last week by former Vice President Cheney, were abhorrent. 
They were also dangerous. They violated our international legal 
obligations, caused grave harm to our reputation as a country devoted 
to the rule of law, endangered our service men and women who every day 
face the risk of capture and mistreatment by our enemies, and caused 
deep embarrassment among the American people who, for generations, have 
taken pride in the image of our country as a defender of human rights 
and the highest moral values.
  Last Friday, these issues and concerns were eloquently addressed in a 
timely piece in The Miami Herald by two distinguished retired senior 
U.S. military officers, Charles C. Krulak, who was commandant of the 
Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999, and Joseph P. Hoar, who was commander 
in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994. I urge all Senators 
to read it, and ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Miami Herald, Sept. 11, 2009]

                 Fear Was No Excuse To Condone Torture

               (By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar)

       In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 
     Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us 
     to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the 
     U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. 
     Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.
       But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to 
     publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a 
     man who has served our country for many years. In light of 
     the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice 
     President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his 
     dangerous ideas--and his scare tactics.
       We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored 
     military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our 
     ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die 
     at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about 
     tortured Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And 
     yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous 
     trip to ``the dark side'' continue to assert--against all 
     evidence--that torture ``worked'' and that our country is 
     better off for having gone there.
       In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cheney applauded the 
     ``enhanced interrogation techniques''--what we used to call 
     ``war crimes'' because they violated the Geneva Conventions, 
     which the United States instigated and has followed for 60 
     years. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were 
     ``absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives 
     and preventing further attacks against the United States.'' 
     He claimed they were ``directly responsible for the fact that 
     for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks 
     against the United States. It was good policy . . . It worked 
     very, very well.''
       Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now 
     see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of 
     Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 
     was produced by professional interrogations using non-
     coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told 
     interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.
       Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it 
     did.
       What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it 
     did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions 
     and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a 
     naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks 
     and nods, it matters.
       The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of 
     war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva 
     Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now 
     Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even 
     those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of 
     lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners 
     exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking 
     matters into their own hands. They protect our nation's 
     honor.
       To argue that honorable conduct is only required against an 
     honorable enemy degrades the Americans who must carry out the 
     orders. As military professionals, we know that complex 
     situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of 
     combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is 
     broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral 
     equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command 
     travels through the ranks at warp speed.
       On Aug. 24, the United States took an important step toward 
     moral clarity and the rule of law when a special task force 
     recommended that in the future, the Army interrogation manual 
     should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. 
     government.
       The unanimous decision represents an unusual consensus 
     among the defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland 
     security agencies. Members of the task force had access to 
     every scrap of intelligence, yet they drew the opposite 
     conclusion from Cheney's. They concluded that far from making 
     us safer, cruelty betrays American values and harms U.S. 
     national security.
       On this solemn day we pause to remember those who lost 
     their lives on 9/11. As our leaders work to prevent 
     terrorists from again striking on our soil, they should 
     remember the fundamental precept of counterinsurgency we've 
     relearned in Afghanistan and Iraq: Undermine the enemy's 
     legitimacy while building our own. These wars will not be won 
     on the battlefield. They will be won in the hearts of young 
     men who decide not to sign up to be fighters and young women 
     who decline to be suicide bombers. If Americans torture and 
     it comes to light--as it inevitably will--it embitters and 
     alienates the very people we need most.
       Our current commander-in-chief understands this. The task 
     force recommendations take us a step closer to restoring the 
     rule of law and the standards of human dignity that made us 
     who we are as a nation. Repudiating torture and other cruelty 
     helps keep us from being sent on fools' errands by bad 
     intelligence. And in the end, that makes us all safer.

                          ____________________