Statements and Speeches

Representative Henry A. Waxman
H.Res. 627
May 6, 2004

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.Res. 627.

We could have passed a resolution with unanimous support today. American abuses of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison are deplorable. They are inhumane. They are immoral. They are inimical to everything America stands for. We universally condemn them.

And there is also unanimous support that every perpetrator of these crimes must be punished, that their superiors must be held accountable, and that our government must ensure that such atrocities never happen again.

This resolution would not be on the floor today, and our international standing would not be in tatters, if the Administration had acted differently. The Administration's instinct to ignore bad news and suppress evidence of mistakes is fundamentally wrong. It is telling that just a few days ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they hadn't even read Major General Taguba's March 9 damning report on the abuses.

This Administration has failed the military, the American people, the Iraqi people, and the international community. A congressional investigation is critical to get to the bottom of this scandal and to attempt to salvage what is left of our standing in the world.

That is why H.Res. 627 is so disappointing. We were presented with a resolution that "urges" the Secretary of the Army to investigate abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and "reaffirms the need for Congress to be frequently updated."

This resolution asks the Bush Administration to investigate itself. Yet this is an Administration that does not even acknowledge mistakes, let alone accept responsibility to correct them. It has never found the person responsible for leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent to the press. It took no action against Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting, for his egregious anti-Muslim statements. It responded to Richard Clarke's revelations with an all-out assault on his character and reputation. To this day, the Administration has not accounted for its use of bad intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, including the fabricated claims that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Niger.

In effect, this resolution abdicates Congress' institutional oversight responsibilities. This is a profound mistake. Just think how different our situation would be today if Congress had not relinquished its constitutional obligation to investigate the Administration's many Iraq policy failures.

The resolution neatly concludes - without evidence - that only "a handful of individuals" are involved in prisoner abuse. But none of us knows how many individuals were involved or how high up the chain of command they go.

This resolution also fails to mention the two private companies, CACI International and Titan Corporation, which have contract employees at Abu Ghraib prison. According to accused soldiers, civilian contractors conducted interrogations and "urged military police… to take steps to make prisoners more responsive to questioning." One of the soldiers has claimed that civilian contractors were involved in an interrogation that left a prisoner dead. Military investigators have said that a CACI instructor was fired for allowing or instructing military police to "facilitate interrogations by setting [unauthorized] conditions." And in his report, Major General Antonio Taguba concluded that two CACI employees were among those "either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib."

Yet the resolution simply ignores these facts and the serious implications they raise.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership could have achieved a unanimous vote in a constructive, bipartisan effort if it had chosen to. But instead it decided to put before the House a resolution asking this Administration to hold itself accountable. That is simply the wrong approach.

Congress must accept its constitutional duties and conduct a thorough investigation. And we must work as hard as we can to try to begin to repair the damage that has been done.