[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 8788-8789]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     THE PRISONER ABUSE RESOLUTION

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to comment about the resolution 
that will be before the Senate. We will vote on it in a very short 
time.
  I support the resolution. The torture and other sadistic abuses of 
prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's 
reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come.
  Protection of the Iraqi people from the cruelty of Saddam had become 
one of the administration's last remaining rationalizations for going 
to war. All of the other trumped-up rationalizations have collapsed. 
Saddam was not on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. He had no 
persuasive link to Al-Qaida. He had nothing to do with 9/11. We have 
found no weapons of mass destruction.
  So it is human rights that the administration turned to in order to 
justify its decision to go to war. On December 24, 2003--the day Saddam 
was captured--President Bush said, ``For the vast majority of Iraqi 
citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings 
further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are 
gone forever.''
  On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked: ``Who would prefer that 
Saddam's torture chambers still be open?''
  Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened 
under new management--U.S. management.
  Every day brings new photos, new horrors from the same prison and the 
same torture rooms that Saddam used to commit crimes against humanity. 
Today, it's the photo of a naked Iraqi man, his hands clasped behind 
his head in terror, facing snarling German shepherd dogs held on 
leashes by American soldiers. According to the New Yorker magazine, 
subsequent photos show the Iraqi man lying on the ground, writhing in 
pain, blood flowing from wounds on both his legs.
  President Bush has presided over America's steepest and deepest fall 
from grace in the history of our country. The tragedy unfolding in Iraq 
is the direct result of a colossal failure of leadership.
  We all agree that the guards and interrogators who committed these 
abuses at Abu Ghraib prison should be held accountable. They should be 
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the responsibility for 
these abuses does not lie with them alone.
  On Friday, the Armed Services Committee held its first public hearing 
on the abuses. Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers came to the hearing 
to tell us what had happened at the prison, but in several instances 
their answers were incomplete or misleading.
  Secretary Rumsfeld testified that the guards at the prison had 
received training on detention procedures and had been instructed to 
abide by the Geneva Conventions. Yet in the report on his investigation 
of such abuses last winter, General Taguba found that the soldiers 
involved were poorly trained to manage such operations. He found that 
neither the prison camp rules nor the provisions of the Geneva 
Conventions were posted in English or in the language of the detainees.
  Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers testified that the abuses at the 
prison lasted from October to December 2003. They said that the 
military leadership's first indication of trouble was when a low-
ranking soldier came forward in January 2004.
  Yet, since the beginning of the war, the International Committee for 
the Red Cross had provided Pentagon officials with repeated reports of 
abuses at the prison. Some of these abuses, the Red Cross reported, 
were ``tantamount to torture.''
  As early as May 2003, the Red Cross had sent Pentagon officials a 
memorandum describing more than 200 allegations of mistreatment during 
the capture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
  In October 2003, the Red Cross inspected the Abu Ghraib prison, 
including the unit where the worse abuses at the prison occurred. They 
saw prisoners being held naked in cells and forced to wear women's 
underwear. They saw evidence of burns, bruises, and other injuries 
consistent with the serious abuses that the prisoners had alleged.
  After this October 2003 inspection, the Red Cross put officials at 
Abu Ghraib prison and at Central Command on notice that they were 
violating international humanitarian law. Yet October 2003 is when the 
military now says that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison began, and that 
they didn't know anything was wrong until 3 months later.
  Clearly, the military leadership failed to respond properly to the 
reports and recommendations of the Red Cross. During 2003, both the 
State Department and the Coalition Provision Authority repeatedly 
appealed to top military officials to stop the mistreatment of military 
detainees. Secretary Powell himself raised this issue at cabinet 
meetings and elsewhere, pleading for proper care and treatment of 
detainees, but the Defense Department failed to act.
  The military leadership is also responsible for putting troops in 
charge of the prison who were not trained to do the job. They assigned 
too few soldiers to the prison than were required to do the job right. 
They relied on civilian contractors to perform military duties, 
including the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
  The military leadership failed to respond in a systemic way even 
after it had initiated 35 criminal investigators into the alleged 
mistreatment of detainees in both Iraq and Afghanistan; 25 of these 
investigations involved deaths. In December 2002, military doctors at 
the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan ruled that two Afghan men in U.S. 
custody had died from ``blunt force injuries.'' No one in the military 
has been held accountable for these homicides.
  Since 9/11, top officials in the administration have shown an 
arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions in 
dealing with detainees. In January 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked 
why he believes the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the detainees at 
Guantanamo. He replied that he did not have ``the slightest concern'' 
about their treatment in light of what had occurred on 9/11. In other 
words, they are terrorists, and torture is too good for them. The 
British magazine The Economist called his remarks ``unworthy of a 
nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very birth.''
  It is clear that it is not enough for us merely to pass a resolution 
condemning the abuses. We need a full and

[[Page 8789]]

independent investigation and fully accountability, including a 
comprehensive review of all detention and interrogation policies used 
by military and intelligence officials abroad, in Iraq, Afghanistan, 
Guantanamo, and elsewhere. The American people and the Iraqi people 
deserve answers, and they deserve them quickly.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho is 
recognized.

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