[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24494]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              LIBBY REPLACEMENT MORE OF THE SAME OLD THING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, the more things change, the more they stay 
the same. The resignation of Scooter Libby as the Vice President's 
chief of staff after receiving a five-count indictment was appropriate 
and welcome. But Mr. Libby's replacement, David Addington, is another 
long-time Cheney confidante who is part of the same secretive cabal of 
neoconservative ideologues, those who have deceived, fabricated, and 
added innuendo to march this country off to a bloody, destructive, and 
disastrous war.
  Mr. Addington is mentioned in the Libby indictment, and there is 
convincing evidence that he was part of the campaign to discredit and 
damage anyone, including Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame 
Wilson, who questioned the administration's misuse of intelligence to 
justify the Iraq invasion. So this is not exactly an administration 
house-cleaning. Instead of a badly needed culture change at the White 
House, what we are getting is business as usual.

                              {time}  2100

  One Washington lawyer who knows Mr. Addington well described him this 
way in the New York Times: He said, ``There are some people in the 
government who are diplomats and others in government who are warriors, 
and Addington certainly falls on the warrior side of that line.'' 
Great. Just what we need right now. Another arrogant, sharp-elbowed 
political dark artist.
  Perhaps most disturbing of all, David Addington is pro-torture. David 
Addington is pro-torture. He makes the rest of the Bush administration 
look like an Amnesty International inspection team. More than a year 
ago, the Washington Post described Addington as ``a principal author of 
the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects'' and ``a 
prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism 
suspects without access to courts.'' What a breath of fresh air, 
especially on the same day that we learned, courtesy of the Washington 
Post, that the CIA has been running a secret network of prison camps 
home to some of the most depraved interrogation techniques, often on 
detainees who do not have any useful intelligence to offer us. It is no 
wonder the Vice President's office has been trying to water down an 
anti-torture amendment, which passed the Senate 90 to 9, to allow an 
exemption for the CIA to continue cruel and degrading treatment of 
prisoners.
  David Addington, a man privileged to occupy a position of authority 
in our government, has used his post to advocate ferociously for a war 
in which he is asked to sacrifice nothing.
  Compare him to a modest and ordinary citizen laid to rest earlier 
today, Rosa Parks, who took personal risks to correct an injustice and 
ensure that America lived up to her ideals.
  And compare Mr. Addington's cynicism to the fresh idealism I saw 
firsthand when I visited our soldiers in Iraq a month ago. These young 
Americans are selfless and heroic beyond belief. Some of them do have 
personal misgivings about our Iraq policy, but they know it is not 
their job to question the mission, just to execute it. And this they 
do, knowing they could lose life or limb. Men and women who wear the 
uniform are the very best America has to offer. It pains me to think 
that their fates actually rest in the hands of the likes of David 
Addington.
  Our troops deserve better. They deserve civilian leaders as 
principled and patriotic as they are. What they deserve most of all is 
a change in policy, one that ends this war and returns them home to 
their families as soon as possible.

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