Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to lend my strong support to the amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio. I would also like to recognize the leadership that the Senator from Kansas, Mr. Brownback, and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, have shown on the issue of Sudan throughout the years.

This amendment mirrors efforts in the House of Representatives appropriations bill to add $95 million to address the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan and across the border in Chad.

It is a good start and I commend the chairman and ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee for accepting this amendment. However, it is only a start, and a modest one at that.

We should be providing at least double this amount to address what is the worst humanitarian crisis that exists in the world today. I hope that by the time we conclude debate on this bill the Senate will have agreed to additional funds for Sudan.

The Senate needs to act. The situation is abysmal. The situation is horrendous. The situation is intolerable.

Sudanese military forces and government-backed militia forces have left tens of thousands dead, over a million displaced, and hundreds of thousands at immediate, urgent risk. USAID has warned that without full humanitarian access, 350,000 displaced civilians may die or hunger and disease in the coming months.

The massacres and widespread rapes, the destruction of villages, mosques and farms--all of this violence and horror have given rise to a second, even more costly wave of suffering, as civilians are left with no capacity to sustain themselves as the rainy season approaches.

On top of this, the Sudan-Chad border is heavily patrolled to keep some of the most vulnerable civilians from fleeing to refugee camps in eastern Chad.

What is happening is appalling, it is an affront to all humanity, to all faiths, and we cannot stand by and simply watch this unfold.

The Sudanese government claims to have granted humanitarian access to Darfur. This is a sham. The government of Sudan has done virtually everything it can to prevent the international community from effectively addressing the crisis in Darfur. The government has stalled and delayed permission to travel, prevented the use of vehicles and radios in certain areas, and looked the other way as militias have attacked and threatened humanitarian workers.

Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk. We have a responsibility to act to address this terrible situation. I urge my colleges to support the DeWine amendment and I will be looking for ways to do more to help the catastrophe unfolding in Sudan.

Will the Senator yield for a request?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be added as a cosponsor. This is a good amendment.

Well, Mr. President, in response to my friend from Tennessee, normally I would say: Have rollcall votes. I also know with the Defense authorization bill we had some very late night schedules. This is pushing up against the Fourth of July recess. I think the Senator from Tennessee, the Senator from South Dakota, and the respective whips have the hardest jobs

in the world trying to please everybody.

I will tell my friend from Tennessee, if that would make his life easier, I would be happy to accommodate him.

I say to the majority leader, he has made a few other people happy.

Mr. President, is it my understanding on the first one there is a rollcall vote?

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, a little more than a month ago we were able to obtain a firm commitment from the White House that there would be no further judicial recess appointments for the remainder of this presidential term. That undertaking led immediately and directly to the Senate vitiating a cloture vote and proceeding to confirm a district court nominee from Florida. Since that time I have been urging the Republican leadership to schedule consideration and votes on the other two dozen nominees to be considered. They started slowly but last week we were able to confirm nine of the judicial nominees. Today we will act on several more.

It is unfortunate that the Republican leadership did not schedule the debate that they know will be required before a vote on the Holmes nomination. There remains no Democratic hold on that nomination. The problem has been the failure of the Republican leadership to build that debate into the Senate schedule.

I am working with the Democratic leader and all Senators to complete action on all the other judicial nominees subject to the understanding. In order to accommodate Senators, we will proceed with some of the nominees by voice vote.

The facts are that Senate Democrats have been much more cooperative with this President than Republicans were when President Clinton was in the White House. Democrats in this Senate have shown great restraint and extensive cooperation in the confirmation of nearly 200 of this President's judicial nominations. We have reduced circuit court vacancies to the lowest level since the Republican Senate leadership irresponsibly doubled those vacancies in the years 1995 through 2001. We have already reduced overall Federal court vacancies to the lowest levels in 14 years, and after today we may hit a level of vacancies achieved only once in the last 20 years with less than 30.

Today we consider William Duane Benton, the fifth of President Bush's nominees to a circuit court we will have confirmed this year. This should be contrasted with the number of circuit court nominees confirmed in the 1996 session, the last year of President Clinton's first term. That session not a single circuit court nominee was permitted by the Republican majority to proceed to confirmation, not one. That year only 17 judges were allowed to be confirmed and all were to district court vacancies.

Judge Benton, who currently serves on the Supreme Court of Missouri, is an example of the sort of nominee that President Bush ought to send for the appellate courts. He has a reputation as a conservative, but fair-minded judge. As an attorney he had experience in a variety of areas of law, and on the State Supreme Court he has handled complex criminal and civil cases. He has written a number of excellent opinions, laying out the facts and the law with no hint of any personal bias. Judge Benton shows a willingness to listen to all litigants and to be fair.

I was especially struck by his fairness in death penalty cases. Far too often judges, especially elected judges, yield to the pressure of those who would sacrifice important constitutional principles in capital cases. As I look at his record, I see that of the 21 published opinions Judge Benton has written in death penalty cases, he has affirmed 12 and reversed nine. I think it is telling that he is willing to see beyond what are always terrible facts in these cases to ensure that justice and important constitutional safeguards are preserved.

I hope that my praise for his work in death penalty cases will not hurt Judge Benton's chances for confirmation. I remember not so long ago when another judge on the Supreme Court of Missouri, now-Chief Justice Ronnie White, was before the Senate as a nominee to a seat on the Federal bench. Sadly, Judge White's willingness to uphold the Constitution and ensure fair process in death penalty cases led to his being defeated by an unprecedented party-line vote of Republican Senators. His record was twisted and distorted for purposes of partisan politics.

Judge White was twice nominated by President Clinton to fill a seat on the U.S. District Court. The Judiciary Committee held two hearings on his nomination. Judge White was introduced enthusiastically by Senator Bond, and after each of these hearings the committee voted favorably to report his nomination to the full Senate. Despite this bipartisan support, however, his nomination was delayed for months and then years. When the time finally came for a vote on the Senate floor, Judge White was ambushed, and he was rejected in a party-line vote during which Republicans who had supported his nomination previously reversed position to scuttle it before the Senate.

The biggest distortions of Judge White's record were in death penalty

cases. His record on the whole compares favorably to Judge Benton's. According to testimony at Attorney General Ashcroft's confirmation hearing, Judge White voted to affirm the death penalty in 69 percent of the cases he heard. Looking just at the opinions Judge Benton has authored, we see him writing to affirm the death penalty 58 percent of the time. If we factor in cases in which he did not write the opinion but voted to affirm a capital sentence, I am sure the percentage is higher, and approaches Judge White's record.

For opposing a capital sentence in dissent in a small minority of the cases he heard, Judge White was vilified. Then-Senator Ashcroft took to the Senate floor and pointed to Judge White's record in death penalty cases as evidence that he was ``pro-criminal,'' further describing Ronnie White as a judge, ``with a tremendous bent toward criminal activity or with a bent toward excusing or providing second chances or opportunities for those who have been accused in those situations.'' These were outrageous things to say about a man who had devoted his life to the law, who had served many years on the State's highest court, and who had voted to reverse a small number of death sentences in order to preserve the integrity of the Constitution. When Judge White came to testify at Attorney General Ashcroft's confirmation hearing, Senator Specter offered him an apology for the way in which he was treated.

I mention all of this, as I said, because it provides such a stark contrast to the treatment that Judge Benton has gotten throughout his confirmation process. I doubt anyone will look at the nine cases in which he wrote to reverse a death penalty--50 percent more cases than those Judge White voted to reverse--and accuse him of being ``pro- criminal''. I will be surprised if, because he has found reversible error in the imposition of nine different death sentences, each one involving terrible crimes and horrific facts, any Member of this Senate will accuse him of having a ``tremendous bent toward criminal activity.'' I will be shocked if, because he exercised his best judgment and followed the law as he understood it, he will be vilified and humiliated in a sneak attack in the manner that Judge Ronnie White was treated.

Of course, none of that should happen to Judge Benton, just as none of that should have happened to Judge White. I hope that one day Judge White's name can come back before the Senate and that he can be treated with the integrity and respect he deserves, just as we treat Judge Benton. I will vote in favor of Judge Benton's confirmation.

Mr. President, today, we are asked to consider the nomination of Dora Irizarry to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. There was some controversy with her nomination stemming from interviews conducted by the American Bar Association. A majority of the ABA Standing Committee members concluded that Judge Irizarry was ``not qualified'' for the Federal bench. I believe we must give considerable weight to such peer reviews.

Unfortunately, Judge Irizarry is one of 28 judicial nominees of this President to receive a partial or majority rating of ``not qualified'' from the ABA committee that conducts a peer evaluation of judicial nominees. When the ABA advises us that even a minority of the members of its review committee consider a nominee to be ``not qualified,'' that is cause for concern. I know that the ABA representatives take their work very seriously.

Last October, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Judge Irizarry, with the consent of both of the Senators from her home-state of New York. The senior Senator from New York, Senator Schumer, served as the ranking member at the hearing. On behalf of the Democratic minority, I worked with Chairman Hatch to allow that hearing to be scheduled on shorter notice than would normally be required under Senate rules. That was one of a series of accommodations Democrats have made to the Republican majority and to this administration without receiving acknowledgment or credit. At the hearing, the committee explored the nomination and the unfavorable recommendation of the ABA. We heard from the nominee, Judge Dora Irizarry, ABA representatives, and the witnesses speaking in support of her qualifications.

The Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee look very closely at the peer review ratings provided by the ABA. Nevertheless, we consider the views of the ABA an important but not a dispositive piece of information as part of our evaluation. We may not always agree with the recommendation.

The Senate proceeded to confirm nominees with majority ``Not Qualified'' ratings from the ABA, and during the course of this administration the Senate has confirmed a number of nominees with partial ``Not Qualified'' ratings.

There are other factors that are critical considerations for these lifetime positions in the Federal judiciary beyond a favorable ABA rating. For example, in the judgment of some Members of the Senate, some of this President's judicial nominees do not have records that demonstrate that they will be fair judges and, instead, their backgrounds suggest precisely the opposite: that they were chosen with the hope that they would prejudge areas of constitutional law in order to move the law in a certain direction in tune with the political views of the right wing of the Republican party.

I have no concerns about the impartiality of the ABA member, Pat Hynes, who conducted the interviews in connection with the nomination of Judge Irizarry. Ms. Hynes, who is of counsel at Milberg Weiss, chaired the ABA standing committee during the beginning of the Bush administration and also served as the ABA's Second Circuit representative from 1995 to 2000. She is currently Chair of the Merit Selection Panel for Magistrate Judges for the Southern District of New York and serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Committee. She was chosen as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and has been named one of the Top 50 Women Litigators in the United States and one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's practice has been to invite the ABA's testimony in connection with a nomination when a circuit or district court nominee has earned a majority or unanimous rating of ``not qualified.'' In providing such testimony, I know that the ABA takes pains to preserve the confidentiality of the attorneys and judges they interview as part of their review. I do wish the ABA would provide similar information, informally or formally, about other ratings they provide. Before President Bush ejected the ABA from the process of providing an informal rating before a nomination was made, the fact that temperament or ethics concerns were raised was conveyed, and sometimes past White Houses chose not to proceed after making further inquiry into such concerns. Additionally, when the ABA was involved in the process before nomination, I am confident that members of the legal community were more candid before a judicial candidate was given the imprimatur of the President.

I understand that in connection with the nomination of Judge Irizarry, the ABA heard a number of candid assessments from the lawyers and judges Ms. Hynes interviewed, some very positive and some troubling in the area of judicial temperament.

Judge Irizarry, who was born in Puerto Rico, is an attorney with the New York firm of Hoguet, Newman & Regal. A 1979 graduate of Columbia Law School, she was appointed to the Bronx County Criminal Court in 1996, and then served on the New York County Criminal Court, on the New York Supreme Court, which, despite its name, is a trial level court, in New York County and Kings County, and on the New York Court of Claims. She served as a judge until May 2002, when she resigned to run an unsuccessful campaign for State Attorney General against Eliot Spitzer. As I mentioned, based on concerns about temperament, a majority of the ABA committee found her to be ``not qualified'' for a Federal judgeship and a minority voted to find her ``qualified.'' The New York City Bar Association's Judiciary Committee also found Judge Irizarry to be unqualified for a position on the Federal bench, citing a lack of Federal experience and complaints about her judicial temperament.

I have concerns about the serious temperament allegations that were made to the ABA standing committee but I trust the judgment of the senior Senator from the State of New York and I am prepared to support Judge Irizarry's confirmation to this lifetime position. I trust that she will conduct herself on the Federal bench in a way that is above reproach.

Nomination of George Schiavelli

Mr. President, today the Senate considers the nomination of George Schiavelli to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. He is currently of counsel at Reed Smith LLP in Los Angeles, where he has worked since 2000. Prior to joining Reed Smith, he served as a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court from 1994-2000. He has significant litigation and judicial experience and I support his nomination.

Mr. Schiavelli's nomination is the product of a bipartisan judicial nominating commission maintained with the White House by Senators Feinstein and Boxer. The State of California is well-served by its bipartisan judicial nominating commission, which recommends qualified, moderate nominees on whom members of both parties can agree. It is difficult to understand why President Bush has opposed similar bipartisan selections commissions since they clearly help Democrats and Republicans work together to staff an independent judiciary.

I thank Senators Feinstein and Boxer for their steadfast efforts in maintaining the commission. It is a testament to their diligence that we have such well-qualified nominees heading to California's Federal courts. With this confirmation, the Senate will have confirmed 15 nominees to the district courts in California.

The Senate will now have confirmed more than two dozen judicial nominees of President Bush this year alone. Only 17 judges were confirmed under Republican leadership in the entire 1996 session and no circuit court nominees were confirmed that entire time. That was the last year in which a President was seeking reelection. We have far exceeded the number of judges confirmed, including circuit judges, that year.

With today's votes, the Senate will have confirmed nearly 200 judicial nominees of President Bush. In this Congress alone, the Senate has confirmed more Federal judges than were confirmed during the 2 full years of 1995 and 1996 when Republicans first controlled the Senate and President Clinton was in the White House. We have also exceeded the 2- year total at the end of the Clinton administration, when Republicans held the Senate majority in 1999 and 2000. I would note, however, that the Republican-controlled Senate has not confirmed in 25 months quite as many as the 100 the Democratic-led Senate confirmed in our 17 months in the majority in 2001 and 2002.

With nearly 200 confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees, the Senate has confirmed more lifetime appointees for this President than were allowed to be confirmed in the most recent four-year presidential term--that of President Clinton from 1997 through 2000. We have confirmed more judicial nominees than the first President Bush appointed in his presidency and more than during President Reagan appointed during his entire term from 1981 through 1984.

I congratulate Mr. Schiavelli and his family on his confirmation today.

nomination of robert b. harwell

Mr. President, today we vote on the nomination of Robert Harwell to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. Mr. Harwell is the name partner of a litigation firm in South Carolina, Harwell, Ballenger, Barth & Hoefer, LLP, where he has practiced law since 1984. He has significant litigation experience, and I support his nomination.

The Senate will now have confirmed more than two dozen judicial nominees of President Bush this year alone. Only 17 judges were confirmed under Republican leadership in the entire 1996 session and no circuit court nominees were confirmed that entire time. That was the last year in which a President was seeking reelection. We have far exceeded the number of judges confirmed, including circuit judges, that year.

With today's votes, the Senate will have confirmed nearly 200 judicial nominees of President Bush. In this Congress alone, the Senate has confirmed more Federal judges than were confirmed during the 2 full years of 1995 and 1996 when Republicans first controlled the Senate and President Clinton was in the White House. We have also exceeded the 2- year total at the end of the Clinton administration, when Republicans held the Senate majority in 1999 and 2000. I would note, however, that the Republican-controlled Senate has not confirmed quite as many as the 100 the Democratic-led Senate confirmed in our 17 months in the majority in 2001 and 2002.

With nearly 200 confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees, the Senate has confirmed more lifetime appointees for this President than were allowed to be confirmed in the most recent four-year presidential term--that of President Clinton from 1997 through 2000. We have confirmed more judicial nominees than his father got confirmed and than during President Reagan's entire term from 1981 through 1984. Republicans should stop their false claims of obstructionism given these broken records.

With this confirmation, we have filled every vacant seat in South Carolina. It is a pleasure working with both of the Senators from South Carolina. I congratulate Mr. Harwell on his confirmation.

Mr. President, I am pleased to speak in support of the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 as passed by the Senate. In the best tradition of the Senate, Members from both sides of the aisle have come together over the past year to renew and improve the School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, the Summer Food Service Program, the Child and Adult Care Food program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, WIC. I commend the chairman and ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Cochran and Senator Harkin, as well as their staffs, for their hard work in support of the millions of children and families who rely on these vital programs to meet their daily food needs.

At the start of the 108th Congress, when we began the process of renewing the child nutrition programs, many of us had high hopes for improvements that might be made. I proposed legislation to provide financial incentives to schools that want to improve their nutritional environment, to renew Federal support for nutrition education in schools, and to expand and stabilize both the WIC and the WIC Farmer's Market Nutrition Programs. With my friend from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, I proposed the creation of a farm-to-cafeteria program that would bring fresh foods from local farms into the cafeteria, and with my friend from Indiana, Senator Lugar, I proposed giving the Secretary of Agriculture greater authority over the sale of soft drinks and junk foods in schools. Other proposals were made to eliminate the reduced price category for school meals, thereby providing free lunches to all children living in families with income below 185 percent of poverty. Unfortunately, the tight budget with which we had to work did not enable us to enact all of these worthy ideas. I am pleased, however, that the bill before us does include many of them and that at the same time it substantially improves program access and integrity.

Working together, we were able to ensure access to the programs for needy children through direct certification, targeted verification, and technical assistance to reduce administrative error, rather than simply requiring across-the-board increased verification that would have potentially caused eligible children to be erroneously and unacceptable kicked off the program.

We have maintained the historic role of milk in our school meals program, while granting parents the flexibility to help their children get a nutritionally equivalent beverage with lunch if they cannot drink milk. This legislation will also allow schools to have more flexibility on what to serve on the school lunch line. While the school lunch program currently restricts schools to offering only milk varieties that most students chose in the previous school year, this legislation would allow schools to expand choices based on what they believe are the best offerings for the student body, including flavored milk, lactose-free milk and milk of varying fat levels. In particular, I welcome the addition of lactose-free milk to the school lunch line, believing it will expand milk's appeal to those with special dietary needs.

We are also taking an important first step in beginning to conquer the problem of soda in our schools. Twenty years ago children consumed more than twice as much milk as soda; now they drink twice as much soda as milk. This is a huge problem for our children. Thus I am pleased this bill gives schools the authority to offer milk at anytime and anywhere on school premises or at school events. This will prevent restrictions on milk sales that are sometimes inserted in soft drink vending contracts with schools.

This legislation ensures that small States will receive an inflationary increase in their administrative expense grant--the money that they receive to administer and ensure the integrity of the Federal child nutrition programs. This provision is particularly important to my home State of Vermont as well as to other small and rural States that have not seen an increase in their grant in over 20 years despite inflation

and expansion of the responsibilities of the States to oversee the programs.

I look forward to the many wonderful local school-farm partnerships that will be possible under my new farm-to-cafeteria grant program as authorized by this bill. Communities all across our Nation are beginning to explore the benefits of linking local farms and school cafeterias. When these connections are made, children get healthier fresh food choices at school, and hands-on knowledge about where their food comes from and how it is produced. And farmers not only strengthen their local markets but become more involved with the schools in their community. With just a little seed money and some technical assistance these schools can create a program that teaches children about good nutrition, shows them the importance of agriculture, and supports local farms by keeping food dollars within the community. Under this new program, communities will be able to apply for competitive grants from USDA for up to $100,000 to purchase adequate equipment to store and prepare fresh foods, to develop food procurement relationships with nearby farmers, to plan seasonal menus and promotional materials, and to develop hands-on nutrition education related to agriculture. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I will now work to secure funding for this important new program.

My support for these new farm-to-cafeteria projects comes in part from the amazing successes demonstrated by the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, FMNP. Years ago, I helped create this program, which provides vouchers to WIC families good for fruits and vegetables at the local farmers market. The effects of this program have been stunning, and I am very pleased that under that this bill the WIC FMNP voucher has been increased from $20 to $30 and that we have reduced the cost to States of administering the program.

These provisions and more mean that millions of children and their families will be better served by the Federal child nutrition programs. Though I wish we could have had more resources to do some of the other things we had considered, like expand access to the child care and summer programs in rural areas, provide mandatory funds for nutrition education, and eliminate the reduced price meal category, I support the package of reforms that we have before us and I pledge to keep working on the rest.

In particular, I will continue to work with my colleagues in the Senate to address the growing crisis of childhood obesity in America and the ready availability of junk foods in our schools and cafeterias. With more and more of our children suffering the health consequences of being overweight and obese, we have a responsibility to help them make smarter nutrition choices. But with all of the funds that Congress rightly appropriates each year for nutrition education and healthy school lunches and meals, our Nation's efforts are severely undermined when children have to walk through a gauntlet of vending machines offering unhealthy choices on the way to the cafeteria. We need to put limits on the availability of junk foods in our schools, to ensure that students are not substituting empty calorie sodas and snacks for their nutritious federally subsidized school meals. Though this measure's establishment of local wellness policies is a step in the right direction, I am concerned that we have sidestepped our responsibility to the health of our Nation's children yet again and I am hopeful that we will revisit this issue in the near future.

Once again, I thank Chairman Cochran and Senator Harkin for their leadership on this important legislation, and I am pleased to express my strong support for its final passage.

Mr. President, last month Americans across this Nation celebrated Memorial Day. It was a day that had special significance for millions of World War II veterans, tens of thousands of whom came to Washington to see the long awaited memorial on the Mall to honor them and the more than 10 million American veterans of that war who are no longer living.

This Memorial Day was also an opportunity to reflect for those of us too young to remember that war, but old enough to have parents or friends who fought, died, or in so many other ways sacrificed and labored together to defeat enemies that threatened the survival of the free world.

For me, it was a day of mixed emotions. It was uplifting for Marcelle and me to be on the Mall and to see so many World War Two veterans and their families together, many of them reuniting with members of their divisions or regiments for the first time in over half a century. It was extraordinarily moving to hear their stories of the war, told as if it were yesterday--stories of bone chilling fear, incredible suffering, and awe inspiring bravery.

It was also a somber occasion. I think each of us was reminded of how much we, and so many millions of people in countries around the world, owe to that generation of Americans.

There was much talk of D-Day, and the thousands of Americans who died on the beaches that first day of the invasion of Normandy. Having returned from Normandy for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I can say that the feeling is similar to what one experiences when visiting Gettysburg or any of the great battlefields of the Civil War. It is difficult to fathom that so many men so young could face death with such undaunted courage.

It was my second visit to Normandy. I was last there for the 50th anniversary, and the sight of those rows, and rows, and rows of white crosses was every bit as moving this time as it was the last.

Three weeks ago I also attended the funeral of one of two young Vermonters who were killed in action in Iraq on May 25. Sgt. Kevin Sheehan and Spec. Alan Bean died when their base on the outskirts of Baghdad was attacked. Six other Vermonters were injured, three seriously. Sgt. Sheehan and Spec. Bean were the ninth and tenth Vermonters to die in Iraq.

Then on June 7, another Vermonter, Sgt. Jamie Gray, was killed and two members of his Battalion were injured when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. He was the eleventh Vermonter to die in Iraq. At his funeral, I thought how the past few weeks have been very sad ones in my State; but, of course, the same could be said for many other states.

As of today, 844 Americans have died in Iraq since the start of the war, and there are thousands more who we rarely hear of who have been wounded. They have lost legs, arms, their eyesight, or suffered other grievous injuries that will plague them for the rest of their lives.

And there are the tens of thousands of Iraqis, including many thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire, who have been killed or injured. Their numbers are not even reported.

When I am in Vermont, and I am there most weekends, there is one question that I am asked over and over. ``What are you doing to bring our troops home?'' It is a question that I found myself asking this Memorial Day weekend, and in Vermont during those funerals, and then again at Normandy. It arises from a fundamental disagreement with President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, and his rationale for continuing to keep tens of thousands of our troops there in harm's way indefinitely.

The attacks of 9/11 were unlike anything our Nation had experienced since that infamous day at Pearl Harbor over a half century ago. I supported the President's decision to use military force against al- Qaida and the Taliban who had shielded them in Afghanistan. It was the right response and the whole world was behind us.

But as so many people warned, the decision to launch a unilateral, preemptive war against Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no plan or ability to attack us, was a fateful diversion from the real terrorist threat.

The President's most recent justification for the war--previous justifications having been proven false--is that the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein. They are. But that is not the measure of a policy that led us into a war based on a false premise, faulty, distorted intelligence, and an astounding lack of understanding or concern for the huge costs and liabilities.

Those of us who have to vote to spend the billions of dollars that are necessary to keep our forces there should ask whether the President's decision to ``stay the course,'' apparently indefinitely, justifies the continued deaths of Americans--soldiers and civilians--at the dawn of their lives, often by the very people they were sent to liberate or to help recover.

No one questions that we were unforgivably vulnerable on 9/11. Our borders were porous. Several of the highjackers were living openly, and illegally, in this country. Simply securing the doors on airplane cockpits might have prevented those attacks. Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies were barely speaking to each other. Communication between the White House, the Strategic Air Command, the FAA and the Pentagon was hopelessly confused. Countless warnings were ignored.

No one questions that we need to do far more to protect ourselves from terrorists. Every American is a potential target, as we saw, again, last week with the sickening execution style murder of Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.

The question is how best to protect ourselves at home, and how best to build the alliances we need to combat terrorism around the world.

Imagine if instead of spending $150 billion, soon to be more than $200 billion, to invade and occupy Iraq, we had used that money differently.

Imagine if we had used it to increase fiftyfold the number of police officers in this country.

Imagine if we had used it to put two air marshals on every airplane in or entering American airspace.

Imagine if we had used it to tighten our border controls, so rather than inspecting 10 percent of the shipping containers and trucks entering this country, we inspected 100 percent.

Imagine if we had used it to increase fiftyfold the number of immigration officers at our ports of entry, and to increase fiftyfold the number of investigators to track down people who are here illegally.

Imagine if we had used it to increase fiftyfold our surveillance capabilities along the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Imagine if we had used it to increase tenfold the amount we spend to protect nuclear materials, reactors, and weapons sites from sabotage or theft by terrorists.

Imagine if we had used it to teach Arabic to 10,000 new intelligence officers, and stationed them around the world. Think of the schools we could build, the hospitals, the medical breakthroughs funded, and on and on.

Imagine how much safer we would be if we had done these things. Instead, we are spending that money in Iraq, and we will spend another $50 billion in Iraq next year. Yet even the Secretary of Defense testified that, after spending $150 billion, he does not know if we are winning the war against terrorism. I think it is safe to say that if he believed we were, he would be the first to say so.

When President Bush announced his decision to invade Iraq he said all the things he was expected to say. He said he made his decision only as a last resort, after exhausting every other option. He said it was the hardest decision of his presidency.

In fact, other options were far from exhausted, and the intelligence he relied on was manipulated, misinterpreted, and wrong.

In fact, we now know that it was a decision the President made after minimal debate and with little difficulty. He consulted only his closest political advisors who for years, despite never experiencing combat themselves, had called for the use of force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Those outside the President's inner circle who had reservations were ignored. Those who understand the history and the culture and religious and ethnic rivalries of that part of the world, whom he might have listened to, were ignored.

Over 200,000 young Americans were sent to Iraq, and over 135,000 remain there. They were sent into war despite the absence of any tangible threat to the United States. They were sent to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Many were sent without body armor, without adequate water, and without the proper armor on their vehicles. They were sent in insufficient numbers to prevent the chaos that has caused twice the casualties since the collapse of the Iraqi Government, when the President declared ``Mission Accomplished.'' Many of our most severely wounded have come home to inadequate medical care, or foreclosures on their homes.

The Pentagon's leaders always insist that the safety and welfare of our troops is their highest priority, but history is replete with examples to the contrary and today we are seeing history repeating itself.

Even worse, as hundreds of Americans die and thousands suffer terrible wounds, the rest of the country goes about its daily business, packing for their summer vacations, as if the war is someone else's problem.

Our soldiers do not have the luxury of refusing to fight if they disagree with the President. That is why a decision by the nation's leaders to send America's sons and daughters into harm's way, and to keep them where they are being killed and wounded every day, should be made only if the security of the United States depends on it.

Aside from the usual patriotic cliches, the President has not explained why the security of the United States depends on keeping tens of thousands of Americans deployed in Iraq's cities where they are being blown up by roadside bombs and shot by snipers. What are they doing there that is worth the loss of lives?

There are encouraging steps as a new Iraqi government takes shape. But they do nothing--nothing--to obscure the grim reality that virtually every day more young American lives are lost. How long will this continue? The President says our troops will be there until they ``finish the job.'' What job? It is more than a year since the fall of Baghdad, yet we still do not know what the mission is.

Is it to make Iraq a democracy? Is it, as our troops are told, to kill and capture ``bad guys?'' Is it to protect the oil wells and refineries and Halliburton's other investments there? Is it to remake the Middle East?

Even the President concedes that other countries are not going to donate significant numbers of their own troops.

The hard truth, which no one in this administration is willing to admit, is that regardless of almost anything else that happens in Iraq in the coming year, hundreds perhaps thousands more of America's sons and daughters are likely to be killed or wounded.

There are times when war is unavoidable, as it was when Germany invaded Europe, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and when al-Qaida attacked New York and Washington. And when that happens, when the security of the country depends on it, the country unites and great sacrifices of life and limb are willingly made.

It is those sacrifices that we honor on Memorial Day, and which those of us who were just in Normandy were reminded of so vividly.

But the war against terrorism is a different kind of war.

It will not be won by invading and occupying countries.

It will not be won by alienating our friends and allies, nor by inciting the anger of Muslims around the world who now believe the United States is at war with Islam itself.

It will not be won by arresting people, calling them terrorists, torturing and humiliating them, and releasing them only after it becomes a public relations disaster. Why, if they were innocent, were they detained so long in the first place? It makes a mockery of the very idea of justice.

The war against terrorism will not be won by publicly claiming to respect the law when you are secretly declaring the law obsolete, breaking the law, and then refusing to disclose what was done.

It will not be won when half the American people do not believe the war in Iraq is making them safer.

It will not be won with self-serving rhetoric that distorts history and bears little resemblance to reality.

The war against terrorism will be best fought by using our military selectively, as we are by tracking down al- Qaida in Afghanistan.

It will be best fought by building alliances, by working closely and cooperatively with the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of other countries to infiltrate terrorist networks, capture their leaders, and seize their assets.

It will be best fought by doing far more to help create economic opportunities for the hundreds of millions of impoverished people, particularly in Muslim countries, who have little more than their faith and their anger, and who are the terrorist recruiters' greatest hope.

And it will be best fought by giving far higher priority to strengthening our defenses here at home.

Mr. President, I note by this vote that 20 of the 44 active Federal circuit court district judges from Pennsylvania will be made up of nominees of President Bush. I mention this because some think that somehow he has not been able to get a lot of nominations through. This is a sharp contrast to the way vacancies in Pennsylvania were left unfilled during Republican control of the Senate when President Clinton was in the White House. Republicans denied votes to nine districts and one circuit court nominee of President Clinton in Pennsylvania. That was notwithstanding the very honest due diligence of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter, who tried to get them confirmed. Others in his party blocked a vote. I do not want to see that happen again in Pennsylvania.

Today the Senate considers the nomination of Juan Ramon Sanchez to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. I am glad that the Republican majority has finally decided to proceed to this well-qualified Hispanic nominee, since they departed from the order of the Executive Calendar last week and did not schedule a confirmation vote for Mr. Sanchez, despite the fact that he would have received unanimous Democrat support.

Judge Sanchez has served as a judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Chester County, PA since 1998. Prior to that, he worked for Legal Aid of Chester County, in private practice, and as a senior trial attorney with the Chester County Public Defender's Office. Judge Sanchez has devoted a substantial amount of time to pro bono work in his community and, in particular, to assisting Latino individuals and groups

in various legal matters, including housing, employment, and immigration. He has also served on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System and the Racial Ethnic Bias Implementation Committee of the Judicial Council.

While some people have accused Democrats of being anti-Hispanic, our record of confirming Hispanic nominees is excellent. Judge Sanchez is the 18th Latino confirmed to the Federal courts in the past three years. With the exception of Mr. Estrada, who failed to answer many questions and provide the Senate with his writings and views, we have pressed forward to confirm all of the other Latinos whose nominations have been reported to the floor. Democrats have supported the swift confirmation of 18 of President Bush's 22 Latino nominees.

While President Clinton nominated 11 Latino nominees to Circuit Court positions, three of those 11 were blocked by the Republican Senate and never given a vote. President Bush has only nominated four Latino nominees to Circuit Court positions, three of whom have been confirmed with Democratic support. President Bush's 22 Latino nominees constitute less than 10 percent of his nominees, even though Latinos make up a larger percentage of the U.S. population.

It is revealing that this President has nominated more people associated with the Federalist Society than Hispanics, African Americans and Asian Americans, combined. While President Clinton cared deeply about diversity on the Federal bench, this President is more interested in narrow and slanted judicial ideology. Forty-five of President Bush's nominees to the Federal courts have been actively involved, either as members or speakers, in the Federalist Society.

The Federalist Society is sometimes mischaracterized as a mere debating society, but according to its own statement of purpose, it is a group with a point of view: ``The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.'' One of the goals of the Federalist Society is the ``reordering of priorities within the legal system.''

The administration wants to have it both ways. They want to take credit with the Federalist Society and hard-right conservatives when they nominate ideological nominees, but they want to pretend that ideology does not matter. If ideology does not matter to the President, why has he nominated more members of the Federalist Society than he has members of minority groups? The President has shown that he is steadfastly committed to packing the courts with individuals who will shape the bench according to his ideological goals rather than creating courts that are fair, balanced, independent, and reflective of the diversity within our country.

A look at the Federal judiciary in Pennsylvania demonstrates yet again that President Bush's nominees have been treated far better than President Clinton's and shows dramatically how Democrats have worked in a bipartisan way to fill vacancies, despite the fact that Republicans blocked more than 60 of President Clinton's judicial nominees. With this confirmation, 20 of President Bush's nominees to the Federal courts in Pennsylvania will have been confirmed, more than for any other state.

With this confirmation, President Bush's nominees will make up 20 of the 44 active Federal circuit and district court judges for Pennsylvania--that is more than 40 percent of the Pennsylvania Federal bench. On the Pennsylvania district courts alone, President Bush's influence is even stronger, as his nominees will now hold 17 of the 36 active seats. In other words, nearly half of the district court seats in Pennsylvania will be held by President Bush's appointees. Republican appointees will outnumber Democratic appointees by nearly two to one.

This is in sharp contrast to the way vacancies in Pennsylvania were left unfilled during Republican control of the Senate when President Clinton was in the White House. Republicans denied votes to nine district and one circuit court nominees of President Clinton in Pennsylvania alone. Despite the efforts and diligence of the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, to secure the confirmation of all of the judicial nominees from every part of his home state there were 10 nominees by President Clinton to Pennsylvania vacancies who never got a vote. Despite records that showed these to be well- qualified nominees, many of their nominations sat pending before the Senate for more than a year without being considered. Such obstruction provided President Bush with a significant opportunity to shape the bench according to his partisan and ideological goals.

New articles in Pennsylvania have highlighted the way that President Bush has been able to reshape the Federal bench in Pennsylvania. For example, The Philadelphia Inquirer, observed that the significant number of vacancies on the Pennsylvania courts ``present Republicans with an opportunity to shape the judicial makeup of the court for years to come.''

Like other nominees of President Bush, Judge Sanchez has been very involved in the Republican party. He has assured me that he will be fair to all those who come before him. I hope that he will follow the law and treat all who appear before him fairly regardless of their ideology or party affiliation.

I congratulate Mr. Sanchez and his family today on his confirmation.

Mr. President, today we are asked to consider the nomination of Walter Kelley, Jr. to the Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Kelley is currently a partner with the Norfolk office of the Troutman Sanders law firm. He has significant civil litigation experience. The ABA unanimously found Mr. Kelley to be well-qualified to be a district court judge. He also has the support of both of his home-State Senators.

It should be noted that Mr. Kelley has been very active in Republican politics over the past several decades. Mr. Kelley recently served as the Chairman of the Republican Party of Norfolk for

four years. He is currently involved in a Republican political action committee and serves as Director of the Downtown Republican Club. A few years ago, upon being elected Rector of the Old Dominion University Board of Visitors, Mr. Kelley was asked about the political nature of the position and politics in general, when he answered, ``[i]f you really believe strongly in how it is you think Government should act with the citizenry . . . you can't sit on the sidelines and not be in the game. You're either in there trying to make happen that which you believe in, or you're ceding the whole debate to the other side.''

I trust that Mr. Kelley will not believe that he can continue this advocacy as a judge. By taking his oath of office he will be expected to assume a position of impartiality and discard his previous partisan advocacy. Certainly, we can all agree that the Federal bench is not the place to advocate any agenda other than fairness.

I congratulate Mr. Kelley and his family on his confirmation today.

Mr. President, again, he had the highest ABA rating and is strongly supported by the two Senators from Virginia. I hope everybody on this side of the aisle will vote for him.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I thank the distinguished Senator from Maryland for what she had to say. My wife and I got to know Mattie. My wife invited him to speak at the spouses dinner, the First Lady's luncheon. She told me I had to come down and meet this young man. I remember coming in there and talking with him. I also talked with him again by phone. I sort of hung back because I was not a Senate spouse. I sort of hung back in the corner and listened when he spoke. What an inspirational little boy.

I know the tug I felt when I turned on the news this morning and heard what we all knew was going to happen had happened. He is no longer with us.

Somebody in the news said he probably had more life in that short span than most people have. The Senator from Maryland said similar things. In this case, it is true. He really had.

I thank her for her statement. I know Marcelle and I had our hearts enriched by having met him.

Mr. President, I have the floor, though I see the distinguished Senator from Virginia and, of course, I will yield to him if he is seeking the floor.

Mr. President, if the Senator----

I wanted to accommodate the distinguished chairman, of course. I thought he was about to bring something up. I hope he would not put in a quorum call. I would like to speak about some of the matters that may be coming up later. I have been talking with him and Senator Reid and Senator Levin. If it becomes ripe to make that agreement, naturally I would yield the floor immediately as I did for the chairman. But I find in the joys of allergies, my voice is fast disappearing and I would like to speak now while I know I can so speak.

If the Senator will yield again before he did that? I note, as the Senator knows, I could be speaking now if I wanted to because I already had the floor and I could have refused to yield to him. I did not.

I yielded to him, and had I not done that, of course I would have retained the floor and would have gone forth.

Yesterday we had hours upon hours of quorum calls. All I am suggesting is that I be allowed to continue, and at such point as the Senator reaches an agreement, I would, of course, yield to whomever wishes to make the unanimous consent request. Being unable to do that, I believe my courtesy in giving up the position I had has not been returned. But, of course, the Senator has the parliamentary right to do whatever he wants because he has the floor.

Twenty minutes.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Virginia. For over a quarter of a century we have been accommodating each other. I refer to the distinguished senior Senator from Virginia as ``my Senator'' when I am away from home. I have had the privilege of living part time during the year in his beautiful State, and we have tried to accommodate each other. I think this is the easiest way out of it. Otherwise, we would be in a quorum call. I do thank him.

Mr. President, I understand that at the time the Leahy amendment comes up, there is likely to be a tabling motion. It would be, in effect, a second-degree amendment offered by others on the Judiciary Committee.

The amendment would require the Attorney General to produce documents that the Judiciary Committee needs in order to conduct oversight of the Department of Justice.

The Judiciary Committee has to get to the bottom of the prisoner abuse scandal. Aspects of this scandal are within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. To get to the bottom of it, we require documents from the Attorney General.

What happens if we are blocked from that? I say to my friends that if they vote to block us from getting the documents we seek, what they are doing, whether intentionally or otherwise, is contributing to a coverup.

Let me explain why this amendment is so important. There has been much debate over the last several days and weeks about the abuse of foreign prisoners, and the guidance provided by the President's lawyers with regard to torture. This debate will continue for some time throughout our country, particularly as more courts-martial are held, with the facts emerging slowly, and as the White House releases only some of the documents that are needed to fully understand the origins of the scandal.

In the meantime, the Senate, the body that is supposed to be the conscience of the Nation, should act. There are some very basic things we can do to clarify U.S. policy regarding the treatment of foreign prisoners. We can bring greater transparency to this issue. That is what my amendment does. It is very straightforward, with three basic sections.

First, it lays out U.S. policy with regard to the treatment of prisoners. Second, it establishes basic reporting requirements to which the Congress and the American people are entitled. Finally, it sets out a training requirement for civilian contractors who come into contact with foreign prisoners.

With regard to the policy, my amendment is very forthright. It states that the United States must treat all foreign prisoners humanely and in a manner that the United States would consider legal if perpetrated by the enemy against an American prisoner. That is a restatement of many decades of U.S. policy and the Army's own regulations.

My amendment also reaffirms the obligation of the United States to abide by the legal prohibitions against torture. That is the law of the land.

The memos authored by the Justice Department apparently reveal another view: that torture can be ordered by the President despite clear laws in the United States against it. Even President Bush now says he disagrees with that view.

We should reaffirm that torture is not allowed under any circumstances.

The amendment also codifies the longstanding Army regulation governing the treatment of foreign prisoners. That regulation states that where there is doubt about the legal status of a foreign prisoner, then the prisoner is entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, at least until a status can be appropriately determined by a ``competent tribunal.'' The procedures for the tribunal are specified in regulation.

Unfortunately, our government has ignored this regulation during the course of the war on terrorism and the war in Afghanistan. No such screenings have been conducted in Afghanistan. The administration simply designates someone as a terrorist and that is enough to land them in prison indefinitely.

We have not had one trial by military commission yet. And certainly we determined that some of these people we called terrorists, who could be held indefinitely, were not terrorists, because we let some people go. I suspect some more people will be let go.

We are in this bind because the administration failed to follow the Army's own guidance. The military lawyers knew there would be situations when the legal status of a foreign person captured by our troops was not clear, so they devised a very careful, very basic screening process. By conducting these status hearings, we would then know what rights and what legal protections the individual is entitled to. That is the military policy. It is certainly the policy our U.S. military wants other countries to follow, and the one we said we will follow.

My amendment further states that it is in the interest of the United States to expeditiously prosecute the cases of those held at Guantanamo Bay. We have given the administration wide latitude in how it operates in Guantanamo. Congress understands we are fighting a new kind of war, one where civilians are at great risk, where intelligence is critical, and where the country has to be tough against its enemy.

Having said that, after all the months and years we held prisoners in Guantanamo, not a single case has been prosecuted. Not five, not four, not three, not two, not one. Not a single prosecution. One would think that with the thousands of lawyers in our military and our Justice Department, we could act with some greater dispatch. One would think that of all the people locked up indefinitely, we could have found one, just one, in all those prisoners that we could have prosecuted. But that is not the case.

For the bad actors, the murders, the terrorists at Guantanamo, we need to bring charges against them so that the victims of their crimes can have justice and so that those accused, if found guilty, can finally have their fate determined. These indefinite detentions, where nobody is prosecuted, where no actions are taken, are contrary to our legal system and contrary to the security interests of the United States.

In the reporting section of my amendment, I ask for four basic pieces of information: One, a quarterly report providing the number of prisoners who were denied prisoner of war status and the basis for denying that status; two, the proposed plan for holding military commissions at Guantanamo Bay; third, previous Red Cross reports provided to the military regarding the treatment of prisoners--the ICRC reports can be submitted in classified form as the ICRC has requested; and four, a report setting forth prisoner interrogation techniques that have been approved by the administration.

Much of this information has dribbled out in press reports and through leaks. Why don't we set the record straight and let the American people have access to this information?

The administration ought to have a more orderly process in place for disclosing this information. It will require some structured reporting that is long overdue.

Finally, we know that many prison abuses were carried out by civilian contractors. We do not know who these people are, where they came from, or what they were trained to do. At a minimum, we should require these contractors, just as we require of our military personnel, to be trained in the laws of war and international humanitarian law. It is imperative they understand what the law requires when it comes to the treatment of foreign prisoners.

There is nothing complicated about this amendment. It simply sets out a more coherent framework with regard to how we treat foreign prisoners.

Now, let me turn to the portion of the amendment that I suspect will be subject to a tabling motion--the second-degree amendment.

There is a popular expression used when a group of people mean to work together to protect against possible harm or danger. It is called ``circling the wagons,'' and it comes from American pioneers, who used to form their wagons into a circle to better defend against an attack.

If a move is made to table this amendment, I would say that we are seeing a circling of the wagons by Republicans on behalf of the administration so that none of the information we seek can come out. I find that regrettable, but it is not surprising. It is an election year.

Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the administration's handling of the war in Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction, the disingenuous link to the September 11 attacks, the leak of a CIA operative's name, the months of continued violence against Coalition soldiers after the President had proclaimed victory, and then the photographs out of Abu Ghraib. The American public is sick and tired of being lied to. They are sick of the secrecy. They want answers, but the wagons continue to circle.

This amendment requires the administration to cooperate with a thorough congressional investigation, by Republicans and Democrats alike, into the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. It requires the release of all documents relative to the scandal. All documents--not just a few selected by the administration when the pressure is on.

I would say this: Those who want to keep these documents hidden should know that at some point the day of reckoning is going to come. We are now at a crisis point. Is the Senate of the United States content to serve as an arm of the Executive Branch? Water flows downhill, and so does Government policy. Somewhere in the upper reaches of this administration a process was set in motion that seeped forward until it produced this scandal. To put this scandal behind us, first we have to understand what happened. And we cannot get to the bottom of this until there is a clear picture of what happened at the top.

For many months, the Attorney General and other senior administration officials have refused to answer letter requests for documents relating to the interrogations of detainees abroad.

Earlier this month, the Attorney General appeared before the Judiciary Committee for the very first time since the war in Iraq began, but he refused to answer direct questions posed by Senators and refused to give us the documents we requested regarding the treatment and interrogation of prisoners. And not only that, he offered no legal challenge for his refusal, and practically challenged the Judiciary Committee to subpoena him.

When the Judiciary Committee met last week, I proposed a subpoena. Our Republican colleagues said it was too broad. We narrowed it down to 23 specific documents. When the chairman said it was premature, Senator Feinstein proposed that we amend the subpoena to give the Attorney General more time to produce the documents voluntarily. Even then, it was voted down.

Yesterday, in a small gesture in response to public pressure, the White House released a tiny subset of the materials we sought. All of these should have been produced earlier. Much more remains hidden. Of the 23 we requested, we got 3, and of those 3, 2 had already been posted on the Internet. So, in effect, the administration gave us one voluntarily. Though this is a self-serving selection of documents, it is a beginning. I give the administration credit for that. But for the Judiciary Committee and the Senate to find the whole truth, we will need much more cooperation.

The documents released yesterday raised more questions than they answered. The White House released a January 2002 memo signed by President Bush calling for the humane treatment of detainees. But did the President sign any orders or directives after January 2002? Did he sign any with regard to prisoners in Iraq? Why won't the President's counsel comment on what the President said or ordered?

Why did Secretary Rumsfeld issue and later rescind tough interrogation techniques? How did these interrogation techniques come to be used in Iraq, where the administration maintains that it has followed the Geneva Conventions?

Where is the remaining 95 percent of the material requested by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Why is the White House withholding relevant documents that were produced after April 2003?

When are we going to stop sitting on our hands, becoming a rubberstamp for an administration cloaked in secrecy?

We have the legal right, the constitutional obligation, and the moral authority to ask questions and demand answers today. We have to keep the pressure on until we get honesty and answers. I hope we will stand up and say that we are an independent body in the Senate and that we are willing to ask questions.

More and more, the American people can see that when you ask for 23 documents, and you only get 3, 2 of which have already been released by the press, that is not cooperation. It is not openness or cooperation when there is an arbitrary cutoff of documents after April 2003. It is not cooperation when we cannot find out why there is a difference between the advice that comes from Attorney General Ashcroft's office and what the President says he is going to do. And it is certainly not cooperation when we cannot get to the root of this terrible disconnect between stated policy and the photographs of the torture at Abu Ghraib.

I must say, I am suspicious because I asked about prisoner abuse months before the pictures came out. I have asked about Afghanistan. I was told that the U.S. was complying with the Torture Convention. But we now find that some prisoners died at the hands of some of the jailers.

I have asked the same questions about Guantanamo, including questions like why do we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of detainees, but we cannot find a single one--not even one--we feel confident enough to bring charges against before a military commission? It should be one of the easiest places in the world, if there is any evidence, to get a conviction. Not one trial out of those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners?

Do we wonder why the rest of the world asks whether America has lost its moral compass? As an American, I do not think we have. I believe very strongly in the morality of our country. But I worry very much about what some of our leaders are holding back. I wish we would get all these matters out. I believe we would be better off if we did. We would look better in the eyes of the rest of the world. The United States is not a country that can and should condone torture. We are a country that expects to play by the highest rules because we ask others to, even when our enemies do not. Even during the two world wars, we treated our prisoners humanely.

This is a question we should ask: Why this sudden change in our policies?

I will close by reminding my colleagues that I think it was about a year ago the Secretary of Defense said: We will know if we are winning the war on terrorism if we are capturing or killing or stopping more terrorists than the madrasas are recruiting and churning out.

After Abu Ghraib, I asked the Secretary of Defense: By that definition, are we winning or not? He said he did not know. Obviously, we are not winning. There are recruiting posters all

over the Middle East, and even into Turkey, with photographs from Abu Ghraib.

If the administration will not come forward on its own, if the administration will not tell us what is happening, we--at least the men and women in the Senate--should have the courage to demand answers.

In the weeks since a courageous soldier-whistleblower and a probing journalist revealed to the world the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, evidence has continued to seep out almost daily of similar mistreatment of prisoners in other U.S. military detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. White House officials and the political appointees in the Department of Defense have tried to deflect their own responsibility by singling out a few ``bad apples'' for punishment.

But bit by bit, the press is uncovering new information, and it all points toward those higher up in the chain of command.

On May 15 of this year, President Bush said, ``The cruelty of a few has brought discredit to their uniform and embarrassment to our country.'' That statement, it now turns out, was only partly true. Since then, we have learned a great deal about what was discussed and debated at the highest levels of our government.

While the President insists that he wants to get to the bottom of this, high-level White House and Pentagon officials refuse to answer questions or to disclose the relevant documents requested by the Congress.

They deny any pattern of illegality in the interrogation and treatment of prisoners, while it becomes clearer by the day that this scandal was set in motion by the actions of senior officials.

We learned that in October 2003, General Sanchez ordered the ``harmonization'' of military policing and intelligence in Iraq, placing military intelligence in control of key cellblocks at Abu Ghraib prison.

We learned from the Washington Post that, over the past 18 months, the Army has opened investigations into at least 91 cases of possible misconduct by soldiers against detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the President talks about a few bad apples. The President's comments have become harder and harder to swallow.

We learned on June 7 from the Wall Street Journal about a March 2003 Pentagon report contending that the President was not bound by laws prohibiting torture. This report went so far as to say that Government agents who tortured prisoners at the President's direction cannot be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The very next day, the Washington Post reported that in August 2002 the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al-Qaida terrorists in captivity abroad ``may be justified.'' The memo argued that the President has absolute authority in the ``war against terrorism'' and that international treaties against torture, which the United States ratified, ``may be unconstitutional.'' And, this report continued, Congress is completely powerless when the President acts as Commander in Chief.

That same day, the Attorney General made his first appearance before the Judiciary Committee in 15 months. He refused to give a copy of the Justice Department memo to members of the committee even though he was unable to say on what legal authority he based his refusal.

A week later, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee blocked a subpoena seeking these documents. Some called it a ``fishing expedition,'' even though we asked for a grand total of 23 documents.

The committee of jurisdiction had the opportunity and the responsibility to get us closer to the truth about why these abuses occurred, but the Republicans chose to circle the wagons instead of doing what is right for the country.

The stonewalling in the prison abuse scandal has been building to a crisis point. Yesterday, responding to public pressure, the White House has released a small subset of the documents that offers a glimpse into the genesis of this scandal. There are many items missing from this release, however, including all but three of the 23 items Judiciary Committee Democrats requested in the subpoena that was voted down by Republicans last week. Where are the 20 remaining documents? Perhaps the most ominous omission is the lack of any documents reflecting White House involvement in this issue since military action began in Iraq last year. The released documents do not include a single reference to the treatment or interrogation of detainees in Iraq, despite the heinous abuses at Abu Ghraib that we have all seen with our own eyes.

The White House released a Presidential memorandum dated February 7, 2002, directing that al-Qaida and Taliban detainees be treated humanely. But, did the President sign any directive regarding the treatment or interrogation of detainees after February 7, 2002? More specifically, did the President sign any directive after the United States invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003? These questions remain unanswered.

Last week we learned that Secretary Rumsfeld personally approved plans to hide some of the prisoners in Iraq so that they could not be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross. They became nameless, faceless, and numberless. This is not only Kafkaesque, it was a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. In a press conference last Thursday, Secretary Rumsfeld acknowledged his role in hiding these ``ghost prisoners,'' including one ``high value'' prisoner who was lost in custody for 7 months.

Yet in the same breath, Secretary Rumsfeld said, ``I have not seen anything that suggests that a senior civilian or military official of the United States of America . . . could be characterized as ordering or authorizing or permitting torture or acts that are inconsistent with our international treaty obligations or our laws or our values as a country.''

Secretary Rumsfeld should read the memos written by the Department of Justice and by his own legal staff at the Pentagon. The leaked and released documents reveal plenty to suggest that legal arguments were made and orders were signed in violation of our laws and treaty obligations. The few documents released by the White House yesterday serve to confirm earlier press reports and postings.

A year ago, after learning that the United States might be using techniques that pushed the limits of the Torture Convention, I wrote to the White House looking for assurances that the administration was complying with U.S. and international law. I received a letter that stated clearly and unequivocally that it was and would continue to do so.

In fact, we now know that the White House and the Pentagon were actively working to circumvent the law. Guidelines for interrogating prisoners were applied routinely in multiple locations in ways that were illegal. It is also clear that U.S. officials knew the law was being violated and for months, possibly years, did virtually nothing about it.

Instead, they detailed their lawyers to find legal loopholes and interpretations that would redefine torture and devise innocuous sounding labels for their interrogation techniques, such as ``sensory deprivation'' or ``stress and duress.''

I wrote to the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA last June, a year ago, about the reported torture of Afghan prisoners by U.S. interrogators in December 2003. Two of those prisoners, both of young age, had died during interrogation. Others described being forced to stand naked in a cold room for days without interruption, with their arms raised and chained to the ceiling and their swollen ankles shackled. They said they were denied sleep and forced to wear hoods that cut off the supply of oxygen.

My letter, and subsequent letters, were either ignored or received responses which, in retrospect, bore no resemblance to the facts. Sixteen months later, the investigations of those deaths, ruled homicides, remain incomplete.

Just last week, in a case we had not known of previously, a CIA contractor was indicted for beating an Afghan detainee with a large flashlight. The Afghan, who had surrendered himself at the gates of a U.S. military base, died in custody on June 21, 2003, just days before I received a letter from the Bush administration saying that our Government was in full compliance with the Torture Convention.

Prisoners who are suspected of having killed or attempted to kill Americans do not deserve comforts. But the use of torture undermines our global efforts against terrorism and is beneath a great Nation.

It is illegal whether U.S. personnel engage in such conduct themselves or they hand over prisoners to the government agents of another country where torture is commonly used. That happened in 2002, when U.S. agents sent a Canadian citizen to Syria, letting others do the dirty work. Yet the White House will not provide us with the documents in which they concoct theories to justify turning over detainees to foreign nations that conduct torture.

There are many victims of this policy. First are the Iraqis, Afghans, and other detainees, some of them innocent of any crime, who were tortured or subjected to cruel and degrading treatment. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that it was told by the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that 70 to 90 percent of those in detention were innocent civilians who had been swept up in raids.

That was information that U.S. officials gave to the ICRC. It came from our own Government. It is no wonder that after the horrific images were broadcast around the world, the Pentagon started to clean out Abu Ghraib, releasing thousands of prisoners who apparently never should have been there.

We now know that many other Iraqis and Afghans died in U.S. custody, in conditions so abhorrent they conjure up images reminiscent of a Charles Dickens novel. Many of those deaths were never investigated.

The other victims of this policy are our own soldiers, who overwhelmingly perform their duties with honor and courage, and who now have been unfairly tarnished and endangered by these images and this scandal.

Our troops have also been tarnished by profiteering companies, none more brazen than Halliburton, which have reaped huge profits while our soldiers are risking their lives and losing their lives. Yet Republicans blocked Senate action to make war profiteering a crime and hold these people accountable.

Countless people around the world, especially in the Middle East, suspected that President Bush's decision to invade Iraq had a lot more to do with Iraqi oil than with any of the other reasons he gave that have since been proven false.

I do not share that view, but what better evidence to fuel those charges than Halliburton's noncompetitive contracts and waste. It is fraud and abuse on a scale that would shock the conscience of anyone except perhaps an Enron executive. Halliburton seems to regard the U.S. Treasury as its own personal bank account. With ``cost plus'' contracts, what do they care how much they overcharge the taxpayers? They are guaranteed their profits regardless. It is the antithesis of patriotism.

And then there is America itself. Our Bill of Rights was the model for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Generations of Americans have tried to live up to its promise and to set an example for the world. The damage this administration has caused to our credibility and reputation as a nation of laws and of decency will take years to repair. Just as they have squandered so much of the world's respect and support for our country after September 11, so now have they squandered much of the human rights leadership that has taken so many years to painstakingly build. This is a travesty of monumental proportions.

The individuals who committed those acts are being punished, as they must be. But what of those who gave the orders or set the tone or looked the other way? What of the White House and Pentagon lawyers who tried to justify the use of torture in their legal arguments? These lawyers have twisted the law, advising the President that for an abuse to rise to the level of torture it must go on for months or even years, and be so severe as to generate the type of pain that would result from organ failure or even death.

Think about that, and you begin to realize how destructive and outrageous this is.

And what of the President? Last March, referring to the capture of U.S. soldiers by Iraqi forces, President Bush said, ``We expect them to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoner of theirs that we capture humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.''

At the same time, the President's own lawyer, ignoring the Torture Convention altogether, called the Geneva Conventions ``quaint'' and ``obsolete.'' Today, soldiers who have spoken out about the crimes they witnessed and the involvement of their superiors have been threatened and punished by the Defense Department they have honorably served.

One need only review history to understand why the law makes no exception for torture. The torture of criminal suspects flagrantly violates the presumption of innocence on which our criminal jurisprudence is based, and confessions extracted through torture are notoriously unreliable.

Once exceptions are made for torture it is impossible to draw the line, and more troubling is who would be in charge of drawing it. If torture is justified in Afghanistan, why is it not justified in China, or Syria, or Argentina, or Miami?

If torture is justified to obtain information from a suspected terrorist, why not from his wife or children, or from his friends or acquaintances who might know of his activities or his whereabouts? This has happened in many countries, and decades later those societies are still trying to recover.

The United States cannot become the model of justice our forefathers envisioned if we continue to tolerate the twisted logic that has been given currency with increasing regularity in U.S. military prisons and in the White House since 9/11. Some argue it is a new world since those terrible attacks on our country 3 years ago. And to some degree, they are right, which is why we have reacted with tougher laws and better tools to fight this war. But do we really want to usher in a new world that justifies inhumane, immoral and cruel treatment as any means to an end?

As a nation of laws, and as the world's oldest democracy and champion of human rights, we must categorically reject the dangerous notion that is now in our midst, seeking our assent, or our silence, that torture can be legally justified and normalized.

President Bush has said he wants the whole truth, but he and his administration have been stonewalling from the top. The President must order all relevant agencies to release the memos from which these policies were devised.

He must clearly and unequivocally order all of his subordinates and every member of our armed services to adhere to our international treaty obligations including the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention, and all applicable U.S. laws. And finally, there needs to be a thorough, independent investigation of the actions of those involved, from the people who committed abuses, to the officials who set these policies in motion.

Only when these actions are taken will we begin to heal the damage that has been done.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong support for the amendment offered by Senator Feingold.

Senator Feingold's amendment, which I am proud to cosponsor, would allow the work of the Inspector General of the Coalition Provisional Authority, CPA-IG, to continue its work uninterrupted after the June 30 handover.

This is critical. Congress provided more than $18 billion to rebuild Iraq, roughly the same amount that we spend on the rest of the world combined. Congress jammed through the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill in an extremely short time, without a sufficient number of hearings, into a very chaotic environment without the usual financial controls.

Recognizing this reality, Congress created a strong, independent inspector general to help police these funds.

In the months that followed passage of the Iraq supplemental, we heard numerous reports of waste, fraud, and abuse. If anything, this should have sent a clear signal to the administration and Congress that we need more--not less--oversight of these funds.

It defies logic then that the State Department is now proposing to weaken the one entity that Congress specifically tasked with keeping track of these tax dollars.

The State Department's plan could undermine the independence of this inspector general and disrupt this important work, reducing Congress's ability to account for these funds. It is unlocking the vault to those who want to cheat us.

The State Department also has told the Appropriations Committee that it will have to create 25 new positions to handle the work in Iraq.

Let me get this straight. We want to close down an IG that has about 60 people in place, which are actively conducting audits and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.

After the administration is finished closing down that office, they will turn around and hire 25 new people to do the same work--only through at a lower level office at the State Department.

Why on Earth would we want to do this? At a time when we are hearing weekly reports of abuse by Halliburton and others, why would we want to reinvent the wheel? Why would we downgrade the status of the CPA-IG and undermine its independence? It just does not make any sense.

This is why the amendment offered by the Senator from Wisconsin is so important.

This is why I support his amendment.

Last year Senator Feingold and I offered an amendment to the supplemental bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that established an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority so that there would be one auditing body completely focused on ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and efficiently, and that this effort is free of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Today the CPA, as we all know, is phasing out, but the reconstruction effort has only just begun. According to the Congressional Research Service, as of May 18, only $4.2 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress appropriated for reconstruction in November had even been obligated. This amendment would ensure that the inspector general's office can continue its important work even after June 30 rather than being compelled to start wrapping up and shutting down while so much important work remains to be done.

It renames the Office of the CPA IG, changing it to Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The amendment establishes that this inspector general shall continue operating until the lion's share of the money Congress has appropriated to date for the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund has been obligated.

American taxpayers have been asked to shoulder a tremendous burden when it comes to the reconstruction of Iraq. Over 20 billion taxpayer dollars have been appropriated for the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund. That is more than the entire fiscal year 2004 Foreign Operations annual appropriation. It is more than the entire fiscal year 2004 Foreign Operations annual appropriation. This is a tremendous sum to devote to one country.

We all agreed last year that it required an entity on the ground, exclusively focused on this effort, to ensure

adequate funding and oversight. We agreed that we need a qualified, independent watchdog with all the powers and the authorities that accrue to inspectors general under the Inspector General Act of 1978. We agreed that business as usual whereby individual agency IG's attempt to oversee this mammoth effort in addition to everything else the agency does it simply not appropriate in this case.

There is nothing ordinary about the nature of the U.S. taxpayer investment in Iraq. Ordinary measures will not suffice.

This amendment modifies the legislation creating this IG to ensure that it does not disappear along with the CPA, but instead continues to operate until the amount of reconstruction spending in Iraq more closely resembles other large bilateral foreign assistance programs, which are overseen by existing agency inspectors general. Specifically, to phases out the special IG after 80 percent of the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund appropriated to date is obligated. If that fund grows substantially in the next calendar, then Congress can consider the wisdom of adjusting this mandate accordingly.

Let there be no confusion, this inspector general is only tasked with overseeing how U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent. It does not have a mandate to oversee Iraqi resources. That is not what this is about. So there is nothing at all in continuing this operation that is inconsistent with the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.

Because the Department of Defense has responsibility for what is happening to some reconstruction dollars and the Department of State will have responsibility going forward, it makes good sense to have a focused IG on the ground who is able to see the entire picture at once--not being completely required to just focus on the State Department position or just focus on the Department of Defense portion. This amendment is in no way hostile to the reconstruction effort. This amendment is about trying to get it right.

Suggesting that a special inspector general's office continues to be in order in Iraq is hardly revolutionary. As I have mentioned, the reconstruction budget for Iraq is bigger than the entire fiscal year 2004 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. Yet five different inspectors general--at USAID, at the State Department, at the Defense Department, at the Treasury, and at the Export-Import Bank--are charged with overseeing portions of that account. In fact, currently some 41 Federal establishments and designated Federal entities with annual budgets less than $21 billion have their own, independent, statutorily mandated inspector general, from the Railroad Retirement Board to the Smithsonian Institution. We ask for focused accountability when taxpayer dollars are a stake in these situations. We must demand the same in Iraq.

Obviously, when you are talking about $20 billion just for this Iraq situation, we have to do the same thing. We must demand the same in Iraq.

To date, the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority has made important progress, and has some 30 active investigations and 19 audits underway. A whistleblower hotline established by the inspector general has received hundreds of calls. This is clearly not the time to pull the plug on his important effort.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. This is the critical point: To oppose this amendment is to vote for less oversight of the reconstruction effort in Iraq than we have today. It is a step backward if we don't. We cannot abdicate our oversight responsibility. The stakes are far too high for that.

Amendment No. 3400 Withdrawn

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a very simple amendment that everyone should support. This amendment requires the Inspector General of the Department of Defense (DOD-IG), in consultation with the Inspectors General of the State Department and the CIA, to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the programs and activities of the Iraqi National Congress.

Over the last 10 years, we have seen funds from the U.S. Government spent in highly questionable, if not fraudulent ways, including money spent on oil paintings and health club memberships.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. A number of serious questions remain unanswered concerning the INC. Here are a couple of examples:

First, the INC spent millions in setting up offices around the world, including London, Prague, Damacus, and Tehran. The State Department's internal documents indicated that they really had no idea of what was happening in some of these offices--especially Tehran. In light of the recent press reports about INC intelligence sharing with Iran, I think the DOD-IG should take a look at this issue and see what was happening in the Tehran office. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Second, the INC spent millions to set up radio and television broadcasting inside Iraq. The radio program seemed redundant as the U.S. Government was, at the time, funding Radio Free Iraq. A New York Times article questioned the effectiveness of the TV broadcasting program. Kurdish officials indicated that, despite repeated attempts, they could never pickup the INC's TV broadcast inside Iraq. This, again, raises questions about how this money is being spent. The IG should examine this issue. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Third the INC's Informaiton Collection Program--funded initially by the State Department and later by the Defense Department--continues to be a source of controversy and mystery. I have a memo here, written by the INC to Appropriations Committee staff, detailing the INC's Information Collection Program. In this memo, the INC claims to have written numerous reports to senior Administration officials, who are listed in this memo, on topics including WMD proliferation. The Administration disputes this claim. Again, we need to get to the botton of this.

I could go on and on. However, in the interests of time, I will simply say that there are many, serious unanswered questions about the INC's activities.

What was the INC doing with U.S. taxpayer dollars? What was going on in the Tehran office? Did the Information Collection Program contribute to intelligence failures in Iraq? Were the broadcasting programs at all effective in gathering support for U.S. efforts in Iraq?

To be sure, there have been a few investigations into INC. However, these have been incomplete, offering only a glimpse of what occurred.

A few years ago, the State Department Inspector General issued two reports on the INC. But these reports only covered $4.3 million and examined only the Washington and London Offices. The State Department IG informed my office yesterday that these are the only two audits they conducted and have no plans to conduct audits on this issue.

A GAO report, published earlier this year, summarized the different grant agreements that the State Department entered into with the INC, but this report did not attempt to answer the myriad questions that remain about the INC.

Another GAO report is underway, but this looks only at the narrow question of whether the INC violated U.S. laws concerning the use of taxpayer funds to pay for public propaganda.

Finally, according to press reports, the Intelligence Committee is looking to a few issues related to the INC.

My amendment is consistent with these investigations. The DOD-IG does not have to reinvent the wheel. It can build off this existing body of work to answer questions that will remain long after these investigation have been completed.

Mr. President, my amendment is about transparency. My amendment is about accountability. My amendment is about getting to the bottom of one of the most mismanaged programs in recent history.

Most importantly, my amendment is about learning from our mistakes so we do not repeat them in the future. I urge my colleague to support my amendment.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield, not to speak on my amendment but to call it up and offer the second degree now?

Mr. President, I ask that amendment No. 3387 be called up, and I send to the desk a second-degree amendment on behalf of myself and Mr. Corzine.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

I thank the distinguished manager and yield the floor.

How about 9:45?

Mr. President, I appreciate the continuing courtesy of my dear friend, the senior Senator from Virginia. I said earlier on the floor of the Senate that he and I have been friends for over a quarter of a century. I have aged in that time, but he has not. I do appreciate his continuing courtesies.

Mr. President, I have listened to some of the debate in the last 30 or 40 minutes, and it is sort of like a tempest in a teapot--a great deal of shouting and carrying on, but not really hitting the central point.

I spent years as a prosecutor. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. I had the great opportunity to try a lot of cases. I was in the courtroom several days every week in Burlington, VT. We had a saying there, as we do in many States, that if you have the facts on your side, you pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, you pound the law. Of course, if you have neither on your side, you pound the table. We have heard a lot of table pounding tonight.

The fact is that every American, Republican or Democrat, knows that some terrible things happened at Abu Ghraib prison. Some apparently happened in Afghanistan and some in Guantanamo. These are acts that are beneath a great and wonderful country such as the United States, a country blessed with a Constitution and laws and values that serve as a shining beacon for much of the rest of the world.

This did not happen here, and it is not answered by going out and cashiering a couple of corporals or a couple of privates and saying: There, look what we have done.

We all know that the 140,000 American men and women serving in Iraq and in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are obeying the laws, and upholding the best ideals of the United States. And many of our soldiers have been told they are going to serve much longer than their Government originally told them they would have to.

There are some, however, who did the same wrong things in Iraq as they did in Afghanistan and as they did in Guantanamo. Who gave them the green light? Don't tell me it is just a handful of bad actors. If so, those few bad actors must have a wonderful frequent flyer program to be able to show up in Abu Ghraib one day, Afghanistan the next, and Guantanamo the next. Somewhere there was some core permission given. It went to those who were willing to follow a wrong order.

My colleagues can table my amendment, but it will aid the coverup of what has become an international prisoner abuse scandal. If this amendment is tabled, as it may be, it says that the Republican Senators have decided to join the Republican administration in circling the wagons of the unfolding prisoner abuse scandal.

The American public--Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--are sick and tired of being lied to. They are sick of the secrecy. They are demanding answers all over this Nation, but the wagons continue to circle.

My amendment would require the administration to cooperate with a thorough congressional investigation into the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody by releasing all documents relevant to the scandal. We call for the release of all relevant documents, not a tiny subset of documents selected by the administration when the political heat was on.

The question for us as Senators is, Are we content to see the Senate serve as an arm of the executive branch, or are there some of us--at least a majority of us--who actually read the Constitution and realize we are an independent branch of Government? The distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia has reminded us that we do not serve under Presidents, we serve with Presidents. He has reminded us that there are three branches of Government, each independent of the other. Nonetheless, we hear arguments on the floor that we can't ask for these documents because the executive branch does not want to show them to us. But, we are independent Senators, all 100 of us.

Somewhere in the upper reaches of this administration, a process was set in motion that seeped forward until it produced this awful scandal. So to put the scandal behind us--which all of us want to do--we have to understand what happened.

The President of the United States has said they want to get to the bottom of this. So do I, but you cannot get to the bottom of this until you have a clear picture of what is on the top. We have heard the party line on this scandal. The Senator from Alabama argued that the whole thing boils down to just a few people on the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib prison who got out of control. He said that a few people came in at midnight and somehow they got out of control. That line has become harder and harder to swallow as every day new evidence surfaces that the abuses were widespread.

The photographs may be limited to a small group of soldiers at Abu Ghraib, but the abuses were not. It is not right for any of us to claim this was just a small thing when every one of us has seen how extensive the photographs are, those that have been revealed to the public and those that have not.

I question the idea that it was only in Abu Ghraib. As I said, somebody must be getting frequent flyer miles because the same thing was happening at Abu Ghraib prison, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. Just last week, a Federal grand jury indicted a CIA contractor for brutally beating a prisoner in Afghanistan in June of last year. Why did they indict him? Because the prisoner died the day after he was beaten.

The Army has opened a criminal investigation into injuries suffered by a U.S. soldier who was posing as an uncooperative detainee during training with military police at Guantanamo Bay. That soldier suffered traumatic brain injury. This was a brave American soldier who went into a training program. Suddenly, apparently, the rules changed, He used a code word to stop it. He said: I am an American soldier. They kept on doing what somebody higher up had given them the order to do, and he suffered traumatic brain injury.

I could go on and on about this. My point is, it is not just a few bad apples in Abu Ghraib. These things have happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo. Does anybody seriously think that the American public is going to fall for a lie that it is a coincidence that a bunch of MPs in Iraq were abusing prisoners with the very same tactics that were being debated at the highest levels of Government, such as the use of hoods, the use of dogs, the removal of clothing? Do we think these people are somehow telepathic, that they can read the minds of those at the White House or the Pentagon?

Yesterday, the White House released a tiny subset of the materials we sought. This was not all the material we requested. It was a tiny subset. All of those documents should have been provided earlier to Congress. Much more remains held back from public view.

The documents that were released raised more questions than they answered.

After January 2002, did the President sign any other orders or directives? Did he sign any with regard to prisoners in Iraq? Why did Secretary Rumsfeld issue and later rescind interrogation techniques?

How did these interrogation techniques come to be used in Iraq even though the administration has maintained it followed the Geneva Conventions there?

Why is the White House withholding relevant documents produced after April 2003?

Where is the remaining 95 percent of the materials requested by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee?

We have heard on the floor there was a broad-brush request made for the documents. But it was actually a request for 23 specific documents. The White House gave 3 of the 23 and said that it had complied. Incidentally, of those three, two had already appeared on the Internet. The press had found them out before the White House gave them to us.

So even though they gave only one that had not been made public before, I will give them credit for all three. Where are the other 20?

When are we, as Senators, going to stop sitting on our hands, becoming a rubberstamp for an administration cloaked in secrecy?

We have the legal right, we have the constitutional obligation, and I remind Senators we have the moral authority to ask questions and demand answers today.

We have been blessed in this country with a great and wonderful country, but that is a blessing that comes with some responsibilities. We are not maintaining that responsibility unless we keep the pressure on, until we get honesty and we get answers.

So I urge my colleagues, vote down the motion to table. Let us show the Senate is willing to stand up. Let us do what Senators have done in the past. We did it during the Watergate era. We have done it at other times. Let us stand up and ask the questions the American public wants us to ask.

The press seems to be doing it for us. After extensive investigation, the Guardian uncovered widespread evidence of violent abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at Baghram and other U.S. detention centers around Afghanistan. We should have found that out, and we should have stopped it. As I said before, a Federal grand jury indicted a CIA contractor for brutally assaulting a detainee in Afghanistan June 2003. We should have found that out. Instead, we turned a blind eye.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admitted in November 2003 that he ordered a prisoner be held incommunicado, off the prison rolls, and out of the sight of the Red Cross. This ghost detainee got lost in the system for 7 months. Despite his high intelligence value, this ghost detainee received only a cursory initial interview while in detention.

Major General Taguba later criticized the practice of keeping ghost detainees as deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.

The New York Times reported that military lawyers and some colonels received memos citing complaints of abuse at Abu Ghraib in November 2003, 2 months before photographic evidence of abuse prompted the military to launch an investigation. At the same time, the letters I had written to the Department of Defense and others about what we had heard were not answered.

In fact, it turns out now that the majority of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are not the worst of the worst, as the administration asserted, but rather low-level recruits or even innocent men swept up in the chaos of war. This is why, after years, not a single one has been brought before a military tribunal. This is not the mark of a great country. This is not the mark of a moral country.

I ask unanimous consent that materials provided under the amendment be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a very simple amendment that everyone should support. This amendment requires the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, DOD-IG, in consultation with the Inspectors General of the State Department and the CIA, to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the programs and activities of the Iraqi National Congress, INC.

Over the last 10 years, we have seen funds from the United States Government spent in highly questionable, if not fraudulent, ways including money spent on oil paintings and health club memberships. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. A number of serious questions remain unanswered. Here are a couple of examples:

First, the INC spent millions in setting up offices around the world, including London, Prague, Damascus, and Tehran. The State Department's internal documents indicate that they really had no idea of what was happening in some of these offices--especially Tehran. In light of the recent press reports about INC intelligence sharing with Iran, I think the DOD-IG should take a look at this issue and see what was happening in the Tehran office. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Second, the INC spent millions to set up radio and television broadcasting inside Iraq. The radio program seemed redundant as the U.S. Government was, at the time, funding Radio Free Iraq. A New York Times article questioned the effectiveness of the TV broadcasting program. Kurdish officials indicated that, despite repeated attempts, they could never pick up the INC's TV broadcast inside Iraq. This, again, raises questions about how this money was being spent. The IG should examine this issue. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Third, the INC's Information Collection Program--funded initially by the State Department and later by the Defense Department--continues to be a source of controversy and mystery. I have a memo written by the INC to Appropriations Committee staff, detailing the INC's Information Collection Program. In this memo, the INC claims to have written numerous reports to senior administration officials, who are listed in this memo, on topics including WMD proliferation. The administration disputes this claim. Again, we need to get to the bottom of this.

I could go on and on. However, in the interest of time, I will simply say that there are many serious unanswered questions about the INC's activities. What was the INC doing with U.S. taxpayer dollars? What was going on in the Tehran office? Did the Information Collection Program contribute to intelligence failures in Iraq? Were the broadcasting programs at all effective in gathering support for U.S. efforts in Iraq?

To be sure, there have been a few investigations into INC. However, these have been incomplete offering only a glimpse of what occurred. A few years ago, the State Department Inspector General issued two reports the INC. But these reports only covered $4.3 million and examined only the Washington and London offices. The State Department IG informed my office yesterday that these are the only two audits they conducted and have no plans to conduct future audits on this issue.

A GAO report, published earlier this year, summarized the different grant agreements that the State Department entered into with the INC, but this report did not attempt to answer the myriad questions that remain about the INC.

Another GAO report is underway, but this looks only at the narrow question of whether the INC violated U.S. laws concerning the use of taxpayer funds to pay for publicity or propaganda.

Finally, according to press reports, the Intelligence Committee is looking into a few issues related to the INC. My amendment is consistent with these investigations. The DOD-IG does not have to re- invent the wheel. It can build off this existing body of work to answer questions that will remain long after these investigations have been completed.

My amendment is about transparency. My amendment is about accountability. My amendment is about getting to the bottom of one of the most mismanaged programs in recent history. Most importantly, my amendment is about learning from our mistakes so we do not repeat them in the past. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

amendment no. 3399, as modified