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Sen. Sessions Comments on Waterboarding
Friday, February 8, 2008
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to take a moment to try to clarify an issue that has caused a lot of concern for years now. It has now come to a conclusion, and I am glad it has. I am glad to learn waterboarding has not been used but three times by our country and has not been used in almost 5 years. From the reports and statements made by Members of Congress and extreme groups around the world, one would think we have had a systematic effort to waterboard people and otherwise torture and abuse them. Only one prisoner has died since they have been in U.S. custody since the beginning of the war on terror. We treat them very well. I have been to Guantanamo Bay on more than one occasion. I have seen how interviews are conducted. So have large numbers of our body.
As I indicated in earlier remarks, we wish the world were safer than it is. Unfortunately, it is not as safe as we would like. Those of us sitting comfortably at home forget the real threats out there. We tend to forget there are determined groups who want to attack the United States as they did on 9/11 and kill our people. This is an unpleasant task. When confronted on the battlefield, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, we shoot them and we kill them and we drop bombs on them and we kill them because these are life-and-death matters that Congress has authorized. I wish that were not necessary. I know it is a failure of us in some form or fashion. But as a practical person, we know no other alternative than to defend ourselves. We are required to do that.
I was reading an article from the Mr. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., in the Washington Times today. He talks about what Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, said a few days ago in hearings.
Director McConnell said:
The number of terrorist attacks and deaths were greater than in the past six years combined.
He was talking about the battle for Pakistan and its survival.
The article states:
Another [statement] from Mr. McConnell ..... is that al Qaeda plans more attacks against the United States and was working on a plan for attacking the White House as recently as 2006. Homegrown al Qaeda cells here have been primitive, but Mr. McConnell registered his concern that new, more sophisticated cells might threaten us domestically in the years ahead.
And that is a fair summary, I think, of Admiral McConnell's comments.
Since we have now openly talked about the waterboarding question, and Members of Congress and the public have now gotten the information, I think we need to make sure we know exactly how those three occurrences developed.
The first thing we know is it worked. I hate to say, it worked. No. 2, the Agency--only the CIA used water-Ðboarding; never the U.S. military, never the Department of Defense; not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan--it was never utilized by our military, but the Central Intelligence Agency on three occasions since September 11.
As the article says, they utilized it only on those:
[T]error leaders who have posed the utmost threat to our [national] security, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, [who was the] mastermind of [the] attack on our warship the USS Cole in a neutral port.
We had hearings in the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member, about that dastardly attack. And I remember about a year after the Cole was attacked--where we had 18 American sailors killed by this vicious attack; and it could have been a lot more--the Navy commissioned a ship down at Norfolk, VA; and as we walked out of the ceremony, a young sailor hollered out--and it still makes my hair stand up--``Remember the Cole.''
Well, we got the perpetrator, and justice was done.
Abu Zubaydah, [who was] the brains behind the thwarted millennium attacks--
That we were able to block--
and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who directed September 11. .....
The attacks on September 11. KSM, that is his name now for the professionals, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
So I believe the Attorney General of the United States, after researching this matter carefully, and after our intelligence agencies gave it thoughtful review, concluded we do not need to have waterboarding now, that these three instances were justified.
Attorney General Mukasey, a former Federal judge--approved overwhelmingly by the Senate--was asked to make an opinion on waterboarding. He said he believed those actions were justified under those circumstances, and he would not say we would never ever do it again in the future. He said circumstances would determine how you handle those kinds of situations.
Let me note, again, for a lot of people, these are not honest and legitimate soldiers of a nation state. The people who are subjected to this procedure are persons who are unlawful combatants. They are persons who do not fight according to the rules of war, and they do not wear uniforms. They deliberately attack civilian personnel. They do it through subterfuge and violence, and their goals are outside all rules of warfare. Until some recent cases, they were clearly considered not to be provided any protections under the Geneva Conventions.
So I will say, Madam President, we hate to talk about these things. We wish we did not face the kind of threats from the diabolical terrorists that we do. We wish we did not have to go to war and shoot and kill many of them. But we, as a nation--the Congress; both parties--have authorized that activity. We fund that activity. Our soldiers are out there putting their lives on the line at this very moment to execute that policy, placing themselves in harm's way.
I am glad the Attorney General has reviewed it carefully. I am glad he is able to say waterboarding was utilized only three times, that it had not been used in 5 years. But I am glad he also said he would not say it would never be done again. This would be unwise advice to the enemy we face.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
