[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9197]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 SMART SECURITY AND IRAQ PRISONER ABUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kuhl of New York). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, last week, the trial of low-level military 
officers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq reached a 
climactic turning point. Colonel James Pohl, the military judge trying 
PFC Private First Class Lyndie England declared a mistrial in the case. 
Now this case will have to be tried again from the very beginning.
  England's case was thrown out after Private Charles Graner claimed 
that the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison were taken for training 
purposes. This claim contradicts England's guilty plea in which she 
accepted responsibility for her actions and admitted that she had acted 
outside the scope of military orders.
  There is no shortage of evidence that England is guilty of having 
participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners which included subjecting 
the prisoners to forced nudity, savage beatings, electric shock and 
harassment by dogs. Some prisoners, as a matter of fact, died as a 
result of the abuse. Nor is there a question that the abuse of 
prisoners violates our American ethical and moral code. Red, the color 
of blood, is the color that resulted from the beating in Abu Ghraib 
Prison last year. But now yellow is the color of the high-ranking 
military and administration officials who are cowering behind junior 
soldiers, hoping to duck responsibility for setting up a culture 
supporting the use of torture in American-run prisons in Iraq.
  The question is, who is responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib 
Prison? Charles Graner's testimony suggests that the prison abuse 
scandal extends much higher than we have previously been told. Yet, 
only low-ranking soldiers have been held accountable for these abuses. 
Why have prosecutors investigated from the bottom-up instead of going 
straight to the source to find out who condoned these abuses? Why is 
there such a denial of culpability at the highest levels of the 
government?
  Mr. Speaker, we must get to the bottom of this scandal because not 
only were the events at Abu Ghraib brutally inhuman and contrary to the 
democratic ideals of our open government, they also have endangered the 
American people. At a time when the United States is courting the 
support of the Arab world, the last thing we need to do is engage in 
the same atrocious violence as the thugs and terrorists that we are 
opposing. The images of American soldiers violating Iraqi prisoners is 
no doubt a rallying call for all those who want an excuse to hate and 
attack the United States.
  Fortunately, there is a better way than this. I have developed a 
SMART Security Platform for the 21st Century. SMART is a Sensible, 
Multilateral American Response to Terrorism, and it will help 
reinvigorate America's foreign policy by focusing on conflict 
prevention, on international diplomacy and on multilateralism. SMART 
security recognizes security threats and addresses them, but instead of 
conducting our policies behind closed doors and through the barrels of 
a gun, SMART pursues open diplomacy and regional security arrangements 
to achieve our democratic goals.
  Indiscriminate violence will not address the threats we face, because 
most of the post-September 11 security threats require a softer touch. 
That is why SMART security calls for dramatic increases in development 
aid and debt relief for the world's poorest countries to reduce the 
destitute conditions that give rise to terrorism. And they will 
simultaneously increase educational opportunities for the world's 
poorest people. These programs will also help counter the image problem 
that America has cultivated around the world and particularly in the 
Middle East.
  Instead of encouraging militaristic policies that give rise to events 
such as those at Abu Ghraib, SMART security encourages security through 
diplomacy. Perhaps, if the Bush administration had not been so keen on 
going into a misguided and illegal war, we could have utilized 
international diplomacy to encourage democracy in Iraq, instead of 
fighting a war that has thus far cost the lives of more than 1,600 
American soldiers, at least 24,000 Iraqi civilians, and of course, 
there are also more than 12,000 American soldiers who have been gravely 
wounded as a result of war.
  Let us utilize the SMART approach to address the threats we face. I 
encourage all of my colleagues to support this important legislation 
which I am reintroducing next week.

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