[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 21]
[Senate]
[Pages 29243-29244]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               ABU GHRAIB

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will say something about Senator 
Reid's, the Democratic leader's, reference to Abu Ghraib, suggesting 
that this bill, the legislation in this Defense bill has been held up 
perhaps because nobody wants to do anything about what has been going 
on in Abu Ghraib. Once again, it deeply concerns me. Once again, we are 
having the suggestion, if not a plain statement, that we need to pass 
legislation and we need to have congressional hearings to stop things 
such as what occurred in Abu Ghraib.
  I was a member of the Armed Services Committee. I am a member of the 
Judiciary Committee. We have had about 20 hearings on Abu Ghraib. But 
do you know how we found out about Abu Ghraib? We found out about it at 
a press briefing in Baghdad by a U.S. Army general or colonel who said 
they had reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib and they were taking steps to 
investigate it. And they did so. They found people had violated the 
law. They prosecuted them. A number of them are in jail this very day.
  We did not need to pass one single law for that to happen because it 
was in violation of military standards. In fact, none of the 
mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib had to do with trying to 
interrogate them. These people were not interrogators. They were prison 
guards, manning the prison at the graveyard shift, who lost their 
discipline, abused those prisoners, and had no real excuse for it. As 
one of them said, Smith--I believe he was a sergeant--he said: We all 
knew there would be hell to pay if anybody found out what we did. It 
was not approved. We were not ordered to do it. It was not part of our 
military standard and training.
  I remember, very vividly, during that time that an African-American 
colonel in combat, as soldiers were taking hostile fire--they captured 
someone, one of the terrorists or bad guys--and he fired a gun beside 
his head to frighten him and to get him to tell some information. There 
was a life-and-death matter for his troops. They drummed him out of the 
service. He never touched the guy. He never hurt him. It was a moment 
of passion and intense feeling and reaction to being in a life-and-
death struggle. He is out of the military even though he had a quite 
distinguished career.
  Our military does not approve of abusing and torturing prisoners. In 
fact, we have a statute that defines torture, and they have worked hard 
to stay within it. People who do not stay within it get prosecuted. 
Now, we have ideas to go further, and that has been

[[Page 29244]]

put as a part of this bill, and it is going to become law. I hope it 
doesn't go too far. But we have never approved of the kinds of things 
that went on in Abu Ghraib. We have never approved of torture. We have 
a statute, passed by this Congress, that prohibits torture by the 
military or anyone else. We do not allow that. It is not part of our 
standards as a nation. But to say there can never be any stress on 
prisoners who have great intelligence, and who are threats to America, 
I don't think has been consistent with the law of warfare.
  I will note, parenthetically, that it became quite clear, as went 
through our hearings, that the Geneva Conventions, which protect 
soldiers in lawful combat--those protections do not apply to these 
prisoners. They do not wear uniforms. They do not operate on behalf of 
a state, a legitimate nation state, even a quasi-legitimate nation 
state. They do not adhere to standards of behavior. They do not carry 
their guns openly and their weapons openly. They sneak around and 
murder women and children, innocent civilians, contrary to the laws of 
warfare. Therefore, they do not gain the protections of the Geneva 
Conventions. But they are protected against torture, and they are 
entitled to that protection. They should be granted it. And if anybody 
violates those standards, they are prosecuted by the U.S. military.
  I think the military has taken far too much abuse on this. They did a 
huge study of Guantanamo, Gitmo. I have been there twice. I know the 
standards those guards operate under. They have a phrase they greet 
each other with when they see each other on the base, one soldier to 
another. They say: Honor bound. And when they see you, they say: Honor 
bound, sir. They have high standards. They found three abuse cases, 
most minor, that were discovered after a review down there, and 
disciplinary action was taken concerning those. But they are not being 
mistreated every day, abused or tortured. I reject that.

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