Liberated Text -> Congressional Record -> Nine Senators of Shame
Amendment No. 1977
Mr. Warner: Mr. President, I endorse strongly the McCain amendment. I have been a cosponsor from the beginning. I have looked into this situation. At one time when I was privileged to be Secretary of the Navy when the war in Vietnam came to an end, I dealt extensively with the prisoner issue and their families in that tragic era of our history. I have had some insight into this situation which enables me to give the strongest possible endorsement to this amendment by the Senator from Arizona, a very respected member of this Senate and a man with an extraordinary record in the armed services of the United States.
The McCain amendment provides us with the opportunity to better ensure our Nation's military does not repeat the errors, faults and misdeeds we have seen occur at military detention facilities overseas as we fight this war on global terrorism.
As General Abizaid told us last week this will be a long war against terrorists and our Armed Forces must have clear and understandable standards.
The McCain amendment has two parts of equal vital importance, both critical. The first establishes clear rules for the conduct of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines involved in interrogation operations. It does not add new approaches or techniques, it merely takes Army doctrine which is our clearest guidance on conduct of interrogations and makes it our military standard as set forth in the Army Manual.
Clearly the Constitution gives Congress a role to play in the creation of rules pertaining to the treatment of detainees. Article 1, section 8 provides that the Congress shall have power to make rules concerning captures on land and water, and also to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. Rules for treatment and interrogation of detainees clearly falls within this authority given to Congress by the Constitution.
The second part of the McCain amendment speaks to American values. It tells our soldiers, sailors, airman, and marines, our allies, and the rest of the world that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment are not part of the American character.
Our standards against cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment are deeply rooted in our Bill of Rights. Ultimately it is our uniquely American character that must be embedded in our American way or war.
Mr. Levin: I ask unanimous consent I be listed as a cosponsor of the McCain amendment relative to the treatment of detainees.
The Presiding Officer: Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. Levin: Mr. President, I support the McCain amendment on interrogation standards because it protects our troops. Major General Fay, in his investigation into the role of military intelligence in the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, found that DoD's development of multiple policies on interrogation operations for use in different theaters or operations confused Army and civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib." This confusion over what standards applied contributed to the horrific abuses of detainees. This confusion has put our troops at risk of being subjected to abusive treatment should they ever be captured. Senator McCain's amendment would protect our troops by establishing a single, uniform standard for interrogations. This is consistent with the recommendations of Major General Fay. Senator McCain's amendment also requires that detainees in U.S. custody shall not be subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. This is consistent with the high standards to which our military is trained, with how we expect our soldiers to be treated if they fall into enemy custody, with our international obligations, and with our cherished values as Americans. I urge my colleagues to support the McCain amendment.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
Mr. Warner: If I could make certain I still remain a cosponsor of the McCain amendment that is now the pending amendment.
The Presiding Officer: Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
Mr. Stevens: Mr. President, the majority leader laid out a plan for the consideration of the Defense authorization bill. It was before the Senate for 4 days or a little bit longer. There were over 200 amendments offered to that bill and it was brought down.
The Senator from Virginia, the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, came to me and asked if I would object if they put their bill on this bill with a time agreement, with specific amendments with time limits on each amendment. Senator Inouye and I discussed that and we said we would have no objection.
We were then informed that was not possible. The Senator from Virginia said he would like to offer his amendment to this amendment for the purpose of putting pressure on the majority leader to make an arrangement to call up this bill.
I urged him not to do that, as a matter of fact. We met off the floor and he said he was going to do it. He indicated he was going to delete a portion of that bill as he offered it. He did not inform me that the reason for that deletion was because the Parliamentarian had advised him that the bill would be subject to a point of order on the basis of germaneness if he did it. So he eliminated the two provisions of the bill that might be subject to germaneness. The Parliamentarian has now advised that the Senator from Virginia has a right to raise the defense of germaneness and the Senate will vote on that at 7:30.
Beyond that, the concept now of bringing in 108 amendments to the bill when there are still amendments outside--I ask unanimous consent that we adopt the amendments offered by the Senator from Virginia and that no further amendments from the authorization bill be permitted to this bill.
Mr. Levin: I object.
Mr. Stevens: That proves it. The Senators do not know how many of the other 200 amendments are going to come out here on this bill. I have stated time and time again this bill must be passed and sent to conference before we leave this week. We will not leave this week until we finish this bill. I have told the Senate time and time again the emergency supplemental is attached to this bill for Iraq and the war on terror and Afghanistan. Those items must be approved by the President no later than November 15.
We had a supplemental for the past fiscal year, 2005. This is the supplemental for 2006, and 2006 started October 1. We have a continuing resolution we are operating on for the basic operations of the Defense Department, but there is no continuing operation for the supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror.
This must be passed. The Committee on Armed Services knows this. The Senator from Virginia, I must correct. Never before in history has a bill been offered to the appropriations bill and been subject to amendment.
We have taken the authorization bill twice during my time on the Appropriations Committee in full, already agreed to by the committee, and taken it to conference. We have never accepted a portion of a Defense authorization bill and left it open to amendment. Why? The Senate can see right now why. The managers have not reached an agreement on their bill. The committee has not reached an agreement on their bill.
The bill is subject to amendment, and there are over 200 amendments at the desk now that were filed against the armed services bill. They have picked out 108 of them, and they have approved them. They never consulted with us on what they did, but they have approved them and offered them now as an amendment. As they offer the amendment, there are other amendments that come in now because of the circumstance of how many they have picked out and the ones they have not picked out.
Does the Senator believe Senators who offered other amendments that you will not accept will not come here and ask us to accept them? No. They know that. And Senator Levin said there may be some out there, 10 or 12. Well, how long are 10 or 12 amendments going to take when you are on the authorization bill and we are not handling that bill; they are.
I think the Senate has to realize the procedure we are in now. If we start down this road, then every time there is a Defense appropriations bill someone who has not gotten a bill passed in terms of another 1 of the 12 subcommittees--there are 13 on appropriations--is going to come in and say: We want to put our bill on your bill, but, by the way, it will be subject to amendment. You can call up your bill. We can't call up our bill because it is not ready to be called up.
Now, an armed services bill, when it comes here, is a great bill. It takes a long time. We know how long it takes. Our bill usually takes-- one year it took 3 hours. Most years it takes less than a day. Why? Because we are a bipartisan subcommittee. When this bill came out of the subcommittee, it came out unanimously. Not one Senator voted against it. When it came out of the full committee, it was unanimous. Not one Senator voted against it.
The two of us have run a bipartisan team now since 1981. This is the first year that this has been done. I hope the Senate says: We do not want to do it this way because this is opening the door to an entirely new process of using a bill that must be passed as a vehicle to take on a bill that cannot be passed. If they could pass their bill, they would have done it. They would have proved to the majority leader they had amendments, and they could have agreed to them.
That is not our problem. That should not be the appropriators' problem. We have a timeframe. We have 13 bills. We are supposed to get them all done once each year. We have had years when we did not even have an authorization bill, and we survived it. We have had many years where they passed their bill months after we passed the Defense appropriations bill, and we survived it.
But this year--this year--because we are at war, this is absolutely wrong, absolutely wrong. I hope the Senate listens to me. We have to pass this bill before we leave to go home for this recess for these holidays next week. If we do not, we do not have the ability, once we get back, to pass it and then get to conference and then get it to the President in time for the money to be available to use to support our people in the field.
Now, people say: Well, wait a minute, you can reprogram money. We are in a period of a continuing resolution.
There is no money that can be reprogrammed. You cannot reprogram money now. We do not have 2006 money to reprogram. There is no emergency money to reprogram. The emergency money is in part of this bill that has to be passed.
Now, I am getting a little mad. I do not mean to be too mad, but I mean to be very angry and disturbed at the process. The Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Michigan know better than to do this. You know better than to do this. It is time for us to realize we have soldiers and sailors, marines, the Coast Guard in the field now. The money to support them is running out. The reason it has not run out is because we did reprogram some money before September 30 we had available then. There is no more money to reprogram to take care of this war.
Now, I do not know how I can express it any more bluntly than that. I hope the Senate will listen to us and vote against this concept that this bill is germane to this bill to start with. It is not germane. It is a whole authorization bill minus the MILCON and energy portions. But it is still the whole authorization bill, which is subject to amendment. As I said, there are over 100 amendments out there that Members have filed already against this bill.
Now, I will be pleased to take this, if there are no more amendments. That was the understanding to start with: We would take their bill if they had a time agreement, a time to vote for certain on it. I think we have gone too far.
My friend from Hawaii--I do the shouting; he does the thinking--may want to say something more. But I tell you, I am really basically deeply concerned about the future of our men and women in uniform if we treat their money portion of this process this way. This is the authorization process. This is policy. We went into that on another amendment today. I don't know much about all the precedents in terms of the Geneva Conventions and what is in the Army Field Manual. Those amendments--I respect the Senator from Arizona. The Armed Services Committee people do. We know what is in here for money.
The Senator's bill does not pertain to money. It does have some authorizations, but that is all right. They can be passed later after we pass our bill. No one is going to be harmed. But there is going to be a great deal of harm if we do not get this bill passed and sent to conference and get it to the President soon after we get back from this recess.
Now, I do not know how we can do anything more than just say, once again, the Senator from Virginia has embarked on a course that has never been done before. He said it had been done before. It has never been done. Never before has a part of an authorization bill been introduced to this bill, or any other bill for that matter, that was subject to amendment. We do not operate that way. I can remember taking a bill that stood off the floor that far because it had so many authorization bills in it that could not get through, but we took them because they were ready, complete. They were complete. They were ready to go, and they took them in an omnibus bill.
But this is not an omnibus bill. This is one bill. This is a bill for the appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year 2006, plus the emergency supplemental funding for the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror. Under those circumstances, I am appalled that the two Senators would proceed this way. And I tell the Senator from Virginia, our friendship is very close to the brink--very close to the brink--because I believe my job is to get this bill passed, and get it passed as a bill we know we can go to conference on, and get it done and be ready when we get back.
If we were to take this portion of this bill, the Defense bill, to conference, we could not finish the conference until they were finished. And that is definitely not proper.
I yield to the Senator from Hawaii.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.
Mr. Inouye: Mr. President, much as I would prefer to have amity and comity on this floor and be able to accommodate the concerns of my dear friend from Virginia, I must say that I fully agree with my chairman, Mr. Stevens of Alaska. This procedure will set a terrible precedent, one that we will regret in the years to come.
If you look at it very carefully, it will take away some of the rights of people with minority views. So I would hope that another step be taken--I do not know what it is--where we can resolve this matter. I would hope the leadership of the Senate realizes the seriousness of what we are confronting at this moment. It affects the future of this land, and I am not being dramatic.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
Mr. Warner: Mr. President, I say to my two very dear and old friends, I tender any apologies, but I have acted strictly in accordance with the rules, exercising the right that any Senator has. I feel it is imperative because we are a nation at war. We have diligently tried to get up our bill, and this is an option I felt under the rules was open to me, and I have followed it.
There was a time, as Senator Stevens did correctly state--and he was correct in his statements--that we had hoped there would be an agreement between the two sides on what few remaining amendments to our bill, over and above the 100-plus that are in the amendment up here, could be acted upon expeditiously. I still feel there are but a few amendments out there and that we can--Senator Levin and I--resolve them.
I know parts B and C are essential to be enacted into law before this session concludes. I would assume at some point in time the leadership will enable us to bring up sections B and C, at which time such other amendments as colleagues may have can be brought forth and resolved at that point in time.
But I think it is imperative to act now on the core section of the armed services bill. I would hope our colleagues would see that we are giving the whole Senate a chance--not just the managers of the bill but the whole Senate a chance--to show the men and women of the Armed Forces, the people of this Nation, that we can, in these times of emergency, act in a bipartisan way to reconcile a problem such as this, and that if our amendment remains, after the vote at 7:30, and is brought up, that there will not be forthcoming a deluge of amendments which, in effect, would impair the ability of these two managers to get this essential piece of legislation acted upon prior to the commencement of the recess, and that there will be a future time with parts B and C, when they will be able to bring forth such additional amendments as they believe are necessary to be enacted in the 2006 armed services bill; that is, sections B and C would be the tree on which those amendments could be affixed.
So I say to my good friend, I have acted as I feel duty calls. You have stated very clearly the facts. And now I entrust the Senate to make the decision that is right for the country.
I yield the floor.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. Stevens: Mr. President, my last word on this, before we come on the 6 minutes before the vote at 7:30, will be this: There are two packages of amendments before the desk. Under any normal procedure, Senator Inouye and I would review those amendments. We have not seen them. We have not even gotten a copy of them. Normally we would have had a copy of them, at least. But we do not know how many of those are in conflict with our own bill.
The two Senators have acted as managers of a part of our bill because they offered their bill as an amendment. What procedure is this? How can we assure the Senate what is in this bill? How can we even be prepared to go to conference on this bill when we do not know what is in those two packages? There are three portions here. We know what is in the part A, which was part of the authorization bill, but these amendments, we don't know what they are. We may have already accepted some of them. I do not know.
But I think it is really a strange procedure that anyone would suggest, by offering an amendment, that control over the bill go to members from other committees and, in doing so, they clear amendments that we will have to defend in conference, theoretically, as Members of the Senate, but we do not know what is in them. No one knows what is in them. Normally, a package like that, if they had their bill out here, the Defense authorization bill, they would have a bill in front of us, wouldn't they? As a matter of fact, I think the rules require it. But now there are amendments offered at the desk, and I do not think they have given anyone a copy of the amendments. I think this procedure violates the rules of the Senate. I am not going to get into the problem of that yet because we are going to vote on germaneness. Germaneness does not eliminate the points of order we may have against those amendments later. But as a practical matter, this is a really odd procedure, and one that is bound to, as the Senator from Hawaii said, lead to processes in the future that will be totally unmanageable.
I urge the Senate to think about this as we approach the vote at 7:30 p.m.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
Mr. Warner: Parliamentary inquiry: Did not the Senator from Virginia on Monday file an amendment in the nature of a managers' amendment with 60 amendments and they have been at the desk since that period of time?
The Presiding Officer: That would be a matter of public record. The Chair does not keep a record.
Mr. Warner: A matter of public record. Then yesterday I filed a second amendment with about 18 in the nature of a managers' amendment, and they were in the public record.
I say to my good friends, the amendment I filed today, the third one, is nothing more than taking from each package only those amendments which have been at the desk, filed, and consolidating them in a third package.
I say to my friend, I am in no way trying to be devious at all. Those amendments have been a matter of public record Monday, Tuesday, and today's amendment simply is a consolidation of all of those that have been at the desk in that period of time.
I yield the floor.
The Presiding Officer: The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
Mr. McCain: Mr. President, I know the Senator from Rhode Island is waiting, and I will be very brief. First, it is not a happy day for this body when we are in this kind of imbroglio where we are unable to accept as an amendment on an appropriations bill the authorization for the men and women who are fighting in our Nation's defense around the world. It seems to me the least we can do, however this is sorted out, is to have the distinguished leaders--Senators Stevens, Inouye, Levin, and Warner--sit down and see if there is a way to work this out. It may require the participation of the respective leaders. But we should not be in a situation where the best option is to attach an entire authorization bill as an amendment to an appropriations bill. It is a sad commentary on the way we do business.
Amendment No. 1977
Mr. McCain: Mr. President, if I can ask the indulgence of my friend from Rhode Island for 1 minute, I would like to read a statement into the Record.
It reads:
GEN Colin L. Powell, USA (Retired),
Alexandria, VA, October 5, 2005.Dear Senator McCain: I have read your proposed amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill concerning the use of the Army Field Manual as the definitive guidance for the conduct of our troops with respect to detainees. I have also studied your impressive statement introducing the amendment.
I fully support this amendment. Further, I align myself with the letter written to you by General Shalikashivili and a distinguished group of senior officers in support of the amendment.
Our troops need to hear from the Congress, which has an obligation to speak to such matters under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. I also believe the world will note that America is making a clear statement with respect to the expected future behavior of our soldiers. Such a reaction will help deal with the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib.
Sincerely,
Colin Powell.
I hope my colleagues will pay very careful attention to our former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I do not have to tell any of my colleagues of his outstanding and superb record of service to this Nation and the depth of his knowledge as it pertains to this and many other national security issues.
I am very grateful he has come forward with this statement, and I hope my colleagues will pay attention to it.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.