Torture - 4/14/08

Recent days have brought news that the approval of torture by the American military and intelligence agencies was given by President Bush and routinely discussed in detail by his closest advisors, including Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice. The Bush Administration can no longer claim, as it once did, that instances of American use of torture on prisoners are isolated cases of misconduct by individual soldiers.

This cannot be allowed to stand. Not only does American use of torture not make us safer, it actually makes us less safe. Military experts say information gained by torture is unreliable. The use of torture further alienates us from the world community and undermines any demand we would make for our captured soldiers to be treated decently. This Administration has abandoned the moral high ground. It tells others to do as we say, not as we do. 

After WWII, Japanese soldiers were prosecuted as war criminals for using the interrogation technique known as ‘waterboarding.’ Now the U.S. government has admitted to using waterboarding, but still the highest law enforcement official in the land, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, says that he does not know if it amounts to torture.

These actions betray American values; they betray Iowan values. We need to make this clear to the politicians. My opponent in this race, Leonard Boswell, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, has publicly expressed his disapproval of torture and said that he did not know it had been taking place. If he didn’t know, he should have known. But in any case, it is clear that his voting record is inconsistent with his public position.

Most Americans were disgusted and outraged by the revelations of torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in early 2004. Yet Alberto Gonzalez referred to the Geneva Convention rules against mistreating prisoners of war as “quaint” and inapplicable. He further suggested that America should ignore the U.N. Convention against Torture, even though the U.S. signed it, and he concluded that the president has the authority to approve interrogation techniques “up to and including torture.”

Two years after these revelations, Congressman Boswell voted for the Military Commissions Act (S.3930, 09/27/06), which gave the President the ultimate authority to determine which interrogation techniques qualify as ‘torture.’ 82% of House Democrats voted against this bill, which violates long-held American principles of justice. It permits the admission of statements into evidence that were obtained by torture, as well as giving retroactive immunity to any officials who authorized acts of torture.  It suspended habeas corpus, allowing the government to detain hundreds of prisoners for years without ever filing charges against them.

When I am a member of Congress, I will cosponsor H.R. 952, a bill that will end the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ whereby we outsource torture to other countries to avoid violating American laws here at home. That bill was introduced in the House on February 17, 2005. It has 77 cosponsors, but Congressman Boswell has yet to sign on. I will work for legislation that will prohibit American military and intelligence personnel from using torture. I will work to amend or scrap the Military Commissions Act consistent with the principles and standards of the American justice system. I will work to restore basic American values to Washington, D.C.