[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9373-9374]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, I came to speak on other matters, but I 
thought it would be helpful to straighten out some things, where maybe 
those who are watching or who have heard might have a misapprehension 
as to the position that the Secretary of Defense has taken.
  The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff are in Baghdad today. I have heard it said that the Secretary 
defended the rules of engagement for the Abu Ghraib prison, with 
possibly a misunderstanding that he approved or somehow condoned what 
went on and what has been revealed in the shocking photos of abuse we 
have seen.
  Let's be clear on one thing. The rules of engagement are very clear, 
and the rules of engagement do not permit or tolerate the kind of 
abuses we have seen depicted in the Abu Ghraib prison. This is a real 
difference between a free, democratic country with respect for human 
rights observing the Geneva Convention, and those who do not. It has 
been stated on the Senate floor that we are no better than the Saddam 
Hussein government that was running the prisons. That is an unnecessary 
slanderous attack on the men and women of the military who do believe, 
by and large--99.999 percent--in the standards we set.
  The difference in our country is that when we see these evidences of 
abuse we move to do something about them. Investigations began in 
January. The first criminal indictments were handed down near the end 
of March. We are proceeding with the prosecution of those who have been 
shown to be engaged, and we will follow that up the chain of command if 
somebody gave orders that were interpreted to permit this kind of 
behavior. This is a real difference--and I think it is important for 
Americans and people throughout the world to realize that there is a 
difference.

[[Page 9374]]

  It was said earlier this morning that the President took a U-turn 
away from dealing with terrorism and went into Iraq. Let me remind my 
colleagues and the people of the United States that, after viewing the 
intelligence, 77 Senators said we need to do something about Iraq 
because it is a dangerous country, harboring terrorists. We didn't take 
a U-turn. We went into Iraq because it was one of the great dangers to 
the world, in terms of harboring terrorists.
  David Kay, who was leading the Iraqi Survey Group, made many 
inspections over there. He didn't find large caches of weapons of mass 
destruction. Nobody said we would. What he did say when he came back 
was the situation in Iraq was far more dangerous than we even knew 
because terrorist gangs were roaming Iraq. Iraq had produced and used 
chemical or biological weapons on its own people and on the Iranians, 
and this was a dangerous territory. We have seen in recent days how 
dangerous it has become because of al-Zarqawi, a colleague-in-arms of 
Osama bin Laden, set up 2 to 3 years ago, and Ansar al-Islam, which is 
the deadly, vicious terrorist organization that beheaded Nicholas Berg.
  If the world needs to know the difference, the difference is when 
there are abuses such as putting a chain around the neck of an Iraqi 
prisoner, we are going to prosecute people. In Iraq, al-Zarqawi can cut 
the head off an innocent American hostage and I have yet to hear any 
outcry or outrage from the people in that region. There is a real 
difference.
  But we ought to be worried about young people hearing about 
hostages--innocent hostages--being beheaded. Daniel Pearl of the Wall 
Street Journal was beheaded.
  These are the people we are dealing with. This is why this matter is 
important. This battle is not won. It is going to be a battle not of 
months, maybe not even of years, and maybe decades. But the world is 
going to be safer, and we are going to be safer in the United States if 
we can continue the battle President Bush has laid out to carry the war 
on terrorism to those countries that harbor terrorists.

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