Investigating Detainee Treatment

Senator Kennedy gave the following statement today in support of Senator Levin’s amendment calling for the investigation of detainee torture.

“A year and half ago, Americans were stunned by the revolting images of men and women wearing the uniform of our nation, torturing and abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

At the time, we hoped those photos pictured an isolated instance. But we’ve learned since that our own leaders, at the highest levels of our government, in the White House, in the Pentagon, and in the Central Intelligence Agency, have allowed a wide pattern of abuse to occur. Abu Ghraib, it seems, was only the tip of the iceberg.

American officials abused prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. And now we learn that the CIA maintains secret prisons in Eastern Europe where Vice President Cheney arrogantly and unapologetically hopes to permit torture as permanent American policy.

These actions deeply offend American honor and ideals. They invite retribution on our own troops by those who treat them as we treat their prisoners. And they harm America’s image around the world, and make the war on terror that much harder to win.

These abuses should not be swept under the rug and forgotten. The American people deserve to know what their government is doing. Those who have violated our norms and values under the color of the American flag should be held accountable.

That is why I strongly support the Levin amendment to create a commission with responsibility for learning the truth. Its findings not only would bring much-needed accountability of those responsible for these abuses, but also would guide our handling of the detention and interrogation of detainees in the future.

From what we have learned to date, it is clear that our political leaders made deliberate decisions to throw out the well-established legal framework that has long made America the gold standard for human rights throughout the world. The Administration left our soldiers, case officers, and intelligence agents in a fog of ambiguity. They were told to “take the gloves off” without knowing what the limits were. Top officials in the Administration endorsed and defended practices that we’ve condemned in other countries. And the consequences were foreseeable.

In rewriting our human rights laws, the Administration consistently overruled the objections of experienced military personnel and those who represent American interests abroad. As Secretary of State Colin Powell warned the White House, “It will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops.” Senior Defense officials were warned that changing the rules could lead to so-called “force drift,” in which, without clearer guidance, the level of force applied to an uncooperative detainee might well result in torture.

But these wise words fell on deaf ears. Officials at the highest levels of the Administration somehow viewed the rule of law as inconvenient and quaint. As Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary Powell said, “I don’t think, in our history, we’ve ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice-presidential involvement, an attorney general involvement in telling our troops essentially carte blanche is the way you should feel.”

We have created legal and literal black holes where individuals have been placed without hope of receiving due process or fair and humane treatment and that is nothing short of a travesty.

The warnings are all there.

The military’s Judge Advocate Generals – people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of the country – warned that undoing the rules against abuse would undermine protections for our troops.

The FBI warned the abuses at Guantanamo may violate longstanding American practices and policies.

The International Red Cross warned that our actions violate and undermine international agreements that serve to protect our own troops when they are captured.

But the Bush White House still is doing everything it can to avoid accountability. Only yesterday, President Bush said that the United States does not torture. Yet, his own Vice President is lobbying Congress to allow the CIA to use these abusive techniques.

There is little doubt that many of those detained are cold-blooded killers intent on harming Americans. They should be charged for their crimes and locked away.

But we do not win the war on terror by stooping to their level. We do not win by desecrating the very ideals that our soldiers are fighting for. We win by setting an example – by doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

We now know now that the prisoner abuse scandal is not merely the responsibility of a “few bad apples,” as the Administration initially claimed. We cannot simply blame a few lower-ranking soldiers, without looking at the role of William Haynes, David Addington, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Timothy Flanigan, Alberto Gonzalez, and the Vice President in crafting these policies that led to these abuses.

There have been eleven investigations into the treatment of detainees. Eleven. But not one has fully examined the extent to which officials at the top levels of the Administration are responsible for these abuses.
And not one has looked beyond the Pentagon to the CIA, the Justice Department, and to the White House itself. Not the Schlesinger report, and not the ten military investigations that have taken place. We can no longer let the White House off the hook.

By refusing to act like the truth is important, the Administration is only making the crisis worse, further embarrassing the nation in the eyes of the world, and casting greater doubt on its commitment to the rule of law. We will not be able to move past this scandal as a nation until there is full independent investigation of all that has gone wrong in our detention and interrogation policy, and all the persons found responsible for these shameful policies are held accountable.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.”

“Torture, Shaming Us All” – Richard Cohen, The Washington Post