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“THE PRISONER ABUSE RESOLUTION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S5058 on May 10, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE PRISONER ABUSE RESOLUTION
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to comment about the resolution that will be before the Senate. We will vote on it in a very short time.
I support the resolution. The torture and other sadistic abuses of prisoners in Iraq have done immense damage already to America's reputation in the world, and the worst may be yet to come.
Protection of the Iraqi people from the cruelty of Saddam had become one of the administration's last remaining rationalizations for going to war. All of the other trumped-up rationalizations have collapsed. Saddam was not on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. He had no persuasive link to Al-Qaida. He had nothing to do with 9/11. We have found no weapons of mass destruction.
So it is human rights that the administration turned to in order to justify its decision to go to war. On December 24, 2003--the day Saddam was captured--President Bush said, ``For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.''
On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked: ``Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?''
Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management--U.S. management.
Every day brings new photos, new horrors from the same prison and the same torture rooms that Saddam used to commit crimes against humanity. Today, it's the photo of a naked Iraqi man, his hands clasped behind his head in terror, facing snarling German shepherd dogs held on leashes by American soldiers. According to the New Yorker magazine, subsequent photos show the Iraqi man lying on the ground, writhing in pain, blood flowing from wounds on both his legs.
President Bush has presided over America's steepest and deepest fall from grace in the history of our country. The tragedy unfolding in Iraq is the direct result of a colossal failure of leadership.
We all agree that the guards and interrogators who committed these abuses at Abu Ghraib prison should be held accountable. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the responsibility for these abuses does not lie with them alone.
On Friday, the Armed Services Committee held its first public hearing on the abuses. Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers came to the hearing to tell us what had happened at the prison, but in several instances their answers were incomplete or misleading.
Secretary Rumsfeld testified that the guards at the prison had received training on detention procedures and had been instructed to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Yet in the report on his investigation of such abuses last winter, General Taguba found that the soldiers involved were poorly trained to manage such operations. He found that neither the prison camp rules nor the provisions of the Geneva Conventions were posted in English or in the language of the detainees.
Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers testified that the abuses at the prison lasted from October to December 2003. They said that the military leadership's first indication of trouble was when a low-
ranking soldier came forward in January 2004.
Yet, since the beginning of the war, the International Committee for the Red Cross had provided Pentagon officials with repeated reports of abuses at the prison. Some of these abuses, the Red Cross reported, were ``tantamount to torture.''
As early as May 2003, the Red Cross had sent Pentagon officials a memorandum describing more than 200 allegations of mistreatment during the capture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
In October 2003, the Red Cross inspected the Abu Ghraib prison, including the unit where the worse abuses at the prison occurred. They saw prisoners being held naked in cells and forced to wear women's underwear. They saw evidence of burns, bruises, and other injuries consistent with the serious abuses that the prisoners had alleged.
After this October 2003 inspection, the Red Cross put officials at Abu Ghraib prison and at Central Command on notice that they were violating international humanitarian law. Yet October 2003 is when the military now says that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison began, and that they didn't know anything was wrong until 3 months later.
Clearly, the military leadership failed to respond properly to the reports and recommendations of the Red Cross. During 2003, both the State Department and the Coalition Provision Authority repeatedly appealed to top military officials to stop the mistreatment of military detainees. Secretary Powell himself raised this issue at cabinet meetings and elsewhere, pleading for proper care and treatment of detainees, but the Defense Department failed to act.
The military leadership is also responsible for putting troops in charge of the prison who were not trained to do the job. They assigned too few soldiers to the prison than were required to do the job right. They relied on civilian contractors to perform military duties, including the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners.
The military leadership failed to respond in a systemic way even after it had initiated 35 criminal investigators into the alleged mistreatment of detainees in both Iraq and Afghanistan; 25 of these investigations involved deaths. In December 2002, military doctors at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan ruled that two Afghan men in U.S. custody had died from ``blunt force injuries.'' No one in the military has been held accountable for these homicides.
Since 9/11, top officials in the administration have shown an arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions in dealing with detainees. In January 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked why he believes the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the detainees at Guantanamo. He replied that he did not have ``the slightest concern'' about their treatment in light of what had occurred on 9/11. In other words, they are terrorists, and torture is too good for them. The British magazine The Economist called his remarks ``unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very birth.''
It is clear that it is not enough for us merely to pass a resolution condemning the abuses. We need a full and independent investigation and fully accountability, including a comprehensive review of all detention and interrogation policies used by military and intelligence officials abroad, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. The American people and the Iraqi people deserve answers, and they deserve them quickly.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
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