[Congressional Record: February 25, 2010 (House)]
[Page H908]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr25fe10-139]
HANDLING WITH KID GLOVES THE ENEMIES OF THIS NATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, sometimes I just do not
understand this place. We are fighting people who will cut off your
head, who will blow up a building and kill 3,000 people with an
airplane. They will do anything they can to destroy America. Yet, when
we pass an intelligence bill, we want to do everything we can to treat
them with kid gloves. It just doesn't make any sense to me. The bill we
are going to be voting on tomorrow in the manager's amendment says
this:
It would define ``cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment'' in
intelligence interrogations, and it would provide a penalty of up to 15
years in prison for the use of this treatment during an interrogation.
They're talking about our CIA people who are interrogating a
terrorist--an al Qaeda terrorist, a Taliban terrorist or somebody who
is threatening the security of the United States. I want to read that
again.
It would define ``cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment'' in
intelligence interrogations, and it would provide a penalty of up to 15
years in prison for the use of this treatment during an interrogation.
Now, what intelligence agent in his right mind would go that extra
mile to get information from a terrorist who had information about
flying a plane into a building to kill a couple of thousand people?
Because, if he used anything that didn't fit within this category, he
could be jailed. He could be prosecuted and could go to jail for 15
years. That's insane.
Then it goes on to say that it would also provide a criminal penalty
of up to 5 years in jail for medical professionals who enable such
activities.
Look, I don't believe in torture, and I don't believe in mistreating
human beings, but when you're talking about the security of the United
States of America, that's number one. That is number one. When we take
our oath of office here, we swear to uphold and defend the Constitution
against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If these terrorists are
enemies of the United States, we need to do whatever we can to make
sure that we get information from them to protect this country. The
people who are doing that job frontline are the FBI, the CIA, the DIA,
and all of our intelligence agencies. To hamstring them makes no sense
to me whatsoever.
My liberal colleagues on the other side want to pat them on the head
and give them Jell-O for lunch and do all the other crazy things that
you should do. They're living better down at Guantanamo than the people
in our prisons here in the United States--Americans. Yet we want to
make sure that we treat them with kid gloves.
Right now, we have three Navy SEALs who are going to be court-
martialed because they captured an al Qaeda terrorist in Fallujah, in
Iraq, a terrorist who dragged four American contractors through the
streets, burned their bodies, tortured them, and hung them from a
bridge. In addition to that, he cut the head off of Daniel Pearl, a
newsman, and he put his head on a pike.
You know, that guy, I'm sure, deserves a little extra sweet
treatment, but I don't think so. Because he said he was hit in the
mouth, had a bloody lip and got hit in the stomach, the three Navy
SEALs who captured him are being court-martialed.
It makes no sense. This place is going nuts. We ought to be doing
everything we can to defend and protect this country, and that means
doing whatever is necessary, with certain limits, to extract any
information we can from a terrorist. For us to put language in there
like we're going to give a 15-year penalty in prison for a CIA agent
who goes a little beyond by using cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment--and, boy, I don't know how you'd define that--what CIA agent
is going to want to take that risk?
I just don't understand it, Mr. Speaker. We are in a war against
people who want to destroy us and our way of life. They are willing to
do all kinds of things--fly planes into buildings, do everything else,
cut off heads, torture people. Yet we want to make sure we treat them
with kid gloves. It makes absolutely no sense, and I will not vote for
that bill tomorrow or anything that looks like it.
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[Congressional Record: February 25, 2010 (House)]
[Page H909-H910]
INTERROGATION TACTICS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, earlier today we heard some pretty
imaginative accusations from my Republican colleagues when they were
talking about an amendment I offered to the Intelligence Authorization
Act. While my amendment is being removed from the manager's amendment
up in the Rules Committee, I want to take this opportunity to clear up
a few things.
When President Obama took office last year, one of his first
Executive orders was to extend the Army field manual's guidelines on
interrogation tactics. Those guidelines prohibit interrogators in all
Federal agencies from using brutal interrogations in any circumstance.
That is the law today.
So to get the facts straight, brutal interrogations are illegal right
now. But this Executive order doesn't completely solve the problem. The
President can't include criminal penalties in Executive orders, and
current U.S. law doesn't outline what constitutes a brutal
interrogation.
My amendment would have expanded upon the President's Executive order
to clearly define what constitutes a cruel, inhuman, or degrading
interrogation so that it is unmistakable what kinds of techniques are
unacceptable. It also creates criminal penalties for those who use
those kinds of interrogations. And to be clear, I didn't invent
[[Page H910]]
this concept myself. The amendment was based on the Army field manual
definition of acceptable and unacceptable interrogation tactics, which,
as Senator John McCain has said, is effective 99.9 percent of the time.
One of the most important things to remember about these kinds of
interrogations is that they simply don't work.
Brutal interrogations are not an effective tool to collect
information, and what's worse, they actually may produce unreliable
information. As former CIA official Bob Baer has said, ``What happens
when you torture people is they figure out what you want to hear and
they tell you that.''
An endless string of studies have shown us that when people's minds
or bodies are subjected to the kind of trauma these brutal
interrogations entail, their brains don't function properly. For
example, during training exercises, American special operative soldiers
have had difficulty remembering information after they'd been put
through food or sleep deprivation.
Why are the Republicans defending a tactic we know doesn't work?
Interrogations like those hurt our reputation abroad. The world was
horrified when they saw what American soldiers were doing at Abu
Ghraib. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, ``People
are now starting to question whether we're following our own high
standards.''
Brutality like that hurts our credibility and undercuts our
reputation in the global community.
I'm a veteran. I wear my Vietnam pin well and proudly. I served in
the Navy. I'm passionate about protecting this country and keeping our
soldiers safe. More than anything, this amendment was designed to
protect them.
Several soldiers have done a far better job than I can in explaining
why we need laws like this. Retired Colonel Stuart Herrington said that
cruelty in interrogations ``endangers our soldiers on the battlefield
by encouraging reciprocity.'' The golden rule, if you will.
Retired admiral John Huston has said, ``Getting our interrogation
policies back on track will preserve our standing to fight for humane
treatment of American soldiers who are captured.''
I couldn't agree more. Without clear laws that define acceptable and
unacceptable interrogation practices, including criminal consequences
for violating those laws, we are putting more Americans at risk of
being treated with the same brutality.
Just last week the two former Justice Department attorneys who
crafted the legal justification for the use of brutal interrogations
got off scot free. The Justice Department absolved them of their
wrongdoing and only said they had ``exercised poor judgment'' and
hadn't broken the law. They took advantage of a gap in our current law
and provided legal cover for abuse during interrogations. My amendment
would have ensured this kind of legal maneuvering never happens again.
As the President said when he issued his Executive order last year,
``We are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when
it's easy, but also when it's hard.''
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