[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 4016-4017]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         PRESIDENT'S VETO OF THE INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, America is a great and good Nation that has 
been a beacon to the world on human rights. Nothing should be simpler 
than for a President of the United States to stand up and say, clearly, 
that this country does not engage in cruel and abusive interrogation 
practices such as waterboarding; that those practices are abhorrent and 
illegal. It saddens me greatly--but does not surprise me--that this 
President has, once again, refused to make that simple statement. By 
vetoing the intelligence authorization bill because of a provision that 
would reemphasize that waterboarding and other forms of torture are 
illegal, he has added to the shameful legacy of this administration.
  Let me be clear. This provision should not have been necessary. 
Waterboarding and other forms of torture are already clearly illegal. 
Waterboarding has been recognized as torture for the last 500 years. 
President Teddy Roosevelt prosecuted American soldiers for 
waterboarding more than 100 years ago. We prosecuted Japanese soldiers 
for waterboarding Americans during World War II.
  I supported this provision, despite the fact that there is no 
question that waterboarding is already illegal, because this 
administration has chosen to flout the rule of law. They have admitted 
they have engaged in waterboarding, otherwise known as water torture, 
and they refuse to say they will not do it again. The positions they 
have taken publicly on this subject are so destructive to the core 
values of this Nation and our standing in the world that both Houses of 
this Congress have chosen to emphasize, again, that our Government is 
not permitted to use these shameful techniques. His veto, while another 
in a series of self-interested acts, does nothing to make waterboarding 
any less illegal and abhorrent.
  Waterboarding is torture. It always has been torture. William Safire 
in a recent article in The New York Times Magazine traced the 
derivation of the term ``waterboarding.'' It was a chilling history, 
but most disturbing was this recitation of how it was performed on our 
own servicemembers:

       [I]n 1953, a U.S. fighter pilot told United Press that 
     North Korean captors gave him the `water treatment' in which 
     `they would bend my head back, put a towel over my face and 
     pour water over the towel. I could not breathe. . . . When I 
     would pass out, they would shake me and begin again.'

  The greatest tragedy of the President's veto is that he has made it 
harder to protect Americans and our own servicemembers from this form 
of torture. This administration has so twisted America's role, law, and 
values that our own State Department and high-ranking officials in our 
Department of Defense, and even our Attorney General, are not permitted 
to say that the waterboarding of an American is illegal. Only our 
enemies can take comfort in the President's veto. It sacrifices 
America's high moral ground and the force of international standards 
and says that high-ranking American officials agree with them that 
waterboarding is a legal and a useful interrogation ``technique.'' It 
sends the signal that they are as free to use the ``technique'' as the 
Bush administration was, if they determine it to be in their best 
interest. That is how low we have sunk.
  I confirmed in questioning the Director of the FBI just last week 
that in its counterterrorism efforts, the FBI continues to follow 
proscriptions against coercive interrogations. Our top military lawyers 
and our generals and admirals also understand this issue. They have 
said consistently that waterboarding is torture and is illegal. They 
have told us again and again at hearings and in letters that 
intelligence gathered through cruel techniques like waterboarding is 
not reliable and that our use and endorsement of these techniques puts 
our brave men and women serving in the Armed

[[Page 4017]]

Forces at risk. That is why they have so explicitly prohibited such 
techniques in their own Army Field Manual, and it is an example that 
the rest of the Government and the rest of the country should follow.
  Yet it is a provision that would have required compliance with the 
Army Field Manual that caused the President to veto this bill. He said 
it would ``harm our national security.'' He could not be more wrong.
  When the Senate was considering the nomination of the current 
Attorney General, I read in The Washington Post and heard from some 
Members of this body that we could ignore the nominee's refusal to 
recognize that waterboarding is illegal because he had assured us that 
he would enforce a new law against waterboarding if Congress were to 
pass one. I said then that we needed no such law because waterboarding 
was already illegal. I said then that such an assurance was hollow and 
dangerous because this President would surely veto any such 
prohibition. Now he has.
  This is about core American values, the things that make our country 
great. America does not torture. It should always stand against 
torture. This veto is another sad moment for America. America is better 
than this.

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