[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 8748-8750]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               THE APPALLING TREATMENT OF IRAQI PRISONERS

  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise today to reflect and respond to the 
reports of what has happened in Iraq over the last several weeks--the 
pictures emerging of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the 
appalling treatment of those in our custody.
  I have struggled over the last several days to put into words my own 
reactions to these images from half a world away. I have been angered 
by it, and I have been, in some ways, sickened by it. This has 
besmirched the reputation of our country, damaged the reputation of our 
soldiers serving in Iraq, the vast majority of whom have served 
honorably, many of them heroically.
  Yet, what is dominating the news not only in our country but around 
the world are images of American soldiers torturing and humiliating 
those we have captured. This does enormous damage to our cause against 
terrorism. It does enormous damage to America's standing in the world. 
Think of how we would feel if these images were of our soldiers and 
American citizens being treated this way by Iraqis. What would be the 
reaction in America if we saw our soldiers being humiliated and abused 
in the most immoral ways?
  This is, first and foremost, an issue of morality. What has happened 
is morally wrong. It is wrong to humiliate people. It is wrong to abuse 
people. It is wrong to torture people. Those are fundamental values. 
Those are American values. Those are values that are shared by 
virtually every person in this country. What has happened is not the 
America that I know, not the America that I love.
  If we think about the larger effects of what has occurred, nothing 
can be more clear than that it has done enormous damage to our cause 
against terrorism. Before this happened, 71 percent of the Iraqis had 
come to see us as occupiers rather than as liberators. That is before 
this occurred.
  What can be the reaction of Iraqis now? After all of the words about 
our intentions and what we hoped to do to help the Iraqi people emerge 
from under a dictatorship and move toward freedom and democracy and the 
most fundamental values that undergird this country, what can be their 
feeling about America now?
  I remember so well the President saying we had ended the torture 
chambers of Saddam Hussein. I must say that made me proud, that we had 
done something good in this war, that we had ended the torture chambers 
of Saddam Hussein. I think we now have to ask, Have we just created our 
own? That is what the pictures show. That is what the stories say.

[[Page 8749]]

  That is not America. That is not what we stand for. We cannot let 
that be the lasting image of what America has done.
  In the last few days, the papers across the globe and television 
stations around the world have been full of condemnation and anger 
directed at America because there has been a failure, a failure of 
values, a failure of leadership, a failure to put the best American 
foot forward. These results will be long lasting, make no mistake about 
it.
  I graduated high school from an American Air Force base in Tripoli, 
Libya, North Africa. I lived for 2 years in the Arab culture among 
Muslims. I know if one were to try to design something that would 
completely and totally enrage people raised in that culture, one could 
not have designed a scenario worse than what has happened. To have an 
American female in a prison where Iraqi men were naked, forced into 
homosexual positions, you could not design a circumstance that would 
more gravely enrage Muslim sensibilities than that.
  Think of what our reaction would be. Think of the anger we would 
feel. In their culture, there is nothing more profoundly humiliating 
than that, and humiliation breeds anger, and anger breeds terrorism. We 
have created a recruiting poster for al-Qaida that will plague us for 
years.
  Right at the heart of this is morality, fundamental morality, and it 
is imperative that we stand up with one voice and say this is wrong, it 
is morally wrong, and that we, first, admit to what occurred; that we 
pledge it will never happen again; that we move to make amends for 
those who have been injured and humiliated and tortured; and that we 
take steps to assure ourselves and others this will never happen again. 
Those are the basic steps of redemption under any moral code, and those 
are the steps that America must take now.
  After September 11, there was a wave of sympathy and support for 
America all around the world. Muslims condemned what had occurred--or 
at least a significant majority did--and all across the globe people 
rushed to America's side. Now, if you take public opinion soundings 
across the world, what one finds is we have dissipated that wave of 
sympathy and support and replaced it with a rising level of disrespect 
for America. That has serious consequences because, in the war on 
terror, we need allies, we need people who will help out, we need 
people who will provide information on threats to America.
  I think we have to seriously rethink how we are conducting this war 
on terror. I think the war in Iraq was an enormous diversion from the 
real war on terror. We must remind ourselves it was not Iraq that 
attacked the United States on September 11; it was al-Qaida.
  Their acts were directed by Osama bin Laden, not by Saddam Hussein. 
As evil and repugnant as Saddam Hussein, his sons and his regime were, 
they were not the masterminds of the September 11 attack on the United 
States. That was the dirty work of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. They 
are the ones who ought to be our priority in holding people to account 
for the vicious murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11. It 
was al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden who ought to have commanded top 
priority in our move to hold people accountable and responsible for 
those vicious attacks. Instead, I believe we have allowed ourselves to 
be diverted by a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with the September 
11 attacks.
  I hope that as a nation we will rededicate our effort to go after 
those who were responsible for the attacks on this country. It is now 
over 950 days since the September 11 attacks on this country, and still 
Osama bin Laden threatens America and American interests and our 
allies. Still he is issuing threats. Just most recently, he has put a 
bounty on the heads of those who stand with us.
  If one looks at the priorities of our war on terror, we have 130,000 
troops in Iraq and only 15,000 troops in Afghanistan. Many of our elite 
units were taken off the hunt for al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and 
shifted to the Iraqi front to be replaced by units in Afghanistan 
searching for Osama bin Laden whose specialty was Spanish culture. What 
earthly sense does this make in the war on terror?
  Our top priority should have been to continue aggressively the search 
for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and their network of supporters who 
continue to plan attacks on this country.
  As I have searched for some way to understand what has occurred in 
Iraq, I was reminded yesterday in the New York Times of a prison 
experiment that was conducted at Stanford University in 1971. The 
headline in the New York Times story is ``Simulated Prison in 1971 
Showed a Fine Line Between Normal and Monster.''
  These experiments were conducted by the man who was my professor of 
psychology at Stanford University, Dr. Zimbardo. He took volunteers and 
randomly split them into groups of ``guards'' and groups of 
``prisoners.'' And he found within days of the prison experiment 
beginning that the guards had become swaggering and sadistic to the 
point of placing bags over the prisoners' heads, forcing them to strip 
naked, and encouraging them to perform sexual acts. This was not half a 
world a way in Iraq. This was on the campus of Stanford University in 
California. That experiment and studies like it have given, as the New 
York Times reports, insight into how ordinary people can, under the 
right circumstances, do horrible things.
  Professor Zimbardo said that when the news from Iraq emerged, he was 
not surprised that it happened. He said: ``I have exact, parallel 
pictures of prisoners with bags over their heads from the 1971 study,'' 
the prison experiment at Stanford University.
  He went on to say that it is not that we put bad apples in a good 
barrel; we put good apples in a bad barrel. That barrel corrupts 
anything that it touches.
  Maybe that is what occurred here. Maybe we put good apples, 
fundamentally decent people, in a bad barrel and that barrel has 
corrupted everything that it touched.
  One thing that has been learned from these experiments is that in 
situations where people have absolute power over others, it is 
critically important that there are others who are watching, others who 
are monitoring, others who are ensuring that there is not abuse. The 
fact that proper oversight was not present is a failure of leadership, 
and it is a failure of leadership that goes right up the chain of 
command in our country.
  I was asked yesterday, do I favor the resignation of the Secretary of 
Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld. I responded by saying, I want to see the full 
facts before I call for anyone's resignation or removal. I want to know 
what did he know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it.
  Those tests do not just apply to the Secretary of Defense; those 
tests apply to everyone in the chain of command. They apply to our 
commanders in Iraq. They apply to General Myers, the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Those tests apply to the Secretary of Defense 
and they apply to the President of the United States. What did they 
know, when did they know it, and what did they do about it?
  What has occurred here is wrong. It is morally wrong. It has done 
enormous damage to our country, damage that will last for a very long 
time. Those who are responsible should be held to account and we should 
make certain that nothing like this ever happens again. This is not 
America. These are not American values. This is not how America acts 
towards others.
  The behavior shown in these photos and on these tapes are not the 
best of America. They are the worst of America, and we can do so much 
better. We are so much better.
  I was also asked yesterday if I believe America should now leave Iraq 
immediately. Yesterday I had lunch with the young people working in my 
office for the spring semester, interns from all across my State. I 
asked them the question, What do you think we should do? Even those who 
felt passionately that America had made a mistake in going to war in 
Iraq believe that we simply cannot leave now; that we have an 
obligation to improve things; that

[[Page 8750]]

we have an obligation to stabilize things; that we have an obligation 
to prevent the bloodbath that would certainly follow an immediate 
exodus by our country.
  I voted against authorizing this war in Iraq because I did not 
believe it was in the national security interest of the United States. 
I believed we should not open a second front before we had finished 
business with al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. I believed Iraq would be a 
distraction. I believed it would take us away from a successful 
prosecution of the real war on terrorism. As much as I feel strongly 
that that was correct, I also think it would be a mistake for the 
United States to exit precipitously from Iraq. The fact is, we are now 
responsible for what occurs there. We have an obligation to try to make 
this work.
  I do not believe that means the United States has an obligation to 
make a country in the image of America.
  I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. But I do believe we have a responsibility to bring 
stability and to give the Iraqi people a chance to make judgments about 
their own future. That, fundamentally, is what democracy is all about. 
It is not about America picking the leaders for Iraq. I must say, last 
week I was taken aback to read Mr. Bremer and others talking about how 
we are going to pick Iraq's new leaders. Think about that. How we are 
going to decide who Iraq's leaders are going to be? That is not 
democracy. That is not the role of America. Our job is not to pick 
Iraq's leaders. How arrogant is that, to say we can go into a country 
and designate the leaders and think that those people would have any 
credibility among their own people?
  If you want to set up a group for failure, have them chosen by the 
United States. And for us to tell the Iraqi people, these are your 
leaders, what does that have to do with democracy? Those are not the 
values of America. We would not permit for one moment another person to 
choose our leaders. What business do we think we have choosing theirs? 
I think the obligation we have is to help Iraq pick their own leaders 
and have a society where there is sufficient security for them to make 
those decisions and for them to be able to rebuild an economy that has 
been shattered by decades of despotic rule by Saddam Hussein, and now 
by this war.
  This is an important moment in history for our country. We are being 
tested, and we need to apply the best of American values and the high 
standards of morality that have made this country great. We need to 
send a signal to the rest of the world about what we really stand for. 
We need to show all those across the globe that America is fully 
committed to the fundamental values of democracy and freedom and for 
the ability of people to choose their own leaders free from fear and 
intimidation and terror. That is a test that we have faced many times 
in our history, and it is a test that we have passed with flying 
colors.
  At the same time, we should remind the world of the proudest moments 
in American history when, over and over, this country stood up against 
terrorism and fascism and communism and helped the rest of the world be 
free. That is in the finest traditions of America. Those are the values 
we embrace. That is the example we offer the world. Anything less 
detracts from America's greatness.
  I hope in the days ahead that this body and the other body and the 
President of the United States will reflect on a new direction for our 
country in Iraq and in the war on terror. We are faced with a grave 
threat. I believe the strategy that has been pursued is one that, 
instead of reducing the threat to our Nation, has actually increased it 
because when one humiliates, that creates anger, and anger breeds 
terrorism and strengthens those who wish to bring America down.
  So this is a turning point. We have an opportunity to choose which 
direction we take. So many times in our past we have been faced with 
these choices, and always America has responded with its best. I am 
confident that we will do the same now.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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