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“PRESIDENT'S VETO OF THE INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S1994-S1995 on March 12, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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 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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