PRESIDENT'S DEFENSE BILL VETO -- (House of Representatives - January 23, 2008)
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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding.
And, Madam Speaker, I think it's critical to point out that the gentleman from Iowa has been a passionate voice for civil liberties, has been a passionate voice of making sure this country adheres to that great tradition that so embodies each and every one of us. And I think it's important to understand that Mr. Braley from Iowa comes from a family that has served this Nation proudly. He's got a grandfather that fought on the sands of Iwo Jima. And in bringing this fight and understanding what needs to be done to protect our soldiers in this conflict and future conflicts, he's brought a very, very important point out about the President's disregard in vetoing the Department of Defense authorization bill. And I would have to say his voice has been somewhat lone in the wilderness on this. I don't hear the outrage that should be there. So I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to stand with him tonight to bring this important issue forward.
I spent the last 9 days prior to this week traveling throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, talking to our soldiers, talking to our airmen, talking to our Marines, talking to our sailors, and getting a feel for how things were going as far as how their medical care was going and those types of things. And without fail every single one of these individuals with high morale and a pride in what they are doing for their Nation did bring up the question and asked me, Why is our raise being held up? Why can't Congress get the simplest thing done to move forward a raise? And I ask this and in talking to them and talking to other Americans, Madam Speaker, the question comes, and we hear it time and time again, why can't Congress get along? Why can't Congress get things done? And I think Mr. Braley from Iowa has highlighted exactly what it is and exactly what we are up against.
This President chose to hold our warriors hostage their pay raise. And the President may not think 3 1/2 percent is much. I'm sure it's nothing to him. What I can tell you is that it's a lot to a family back home. It's a lot when the mother and father are deployed down range or in a war zone. It's a lot to have that 3 1/2 percent given. But the President didn't concern himself with that, all the good things that Mr. Braley talked about that was in the Department of Defense Authorization Act, a very important one was the ability of our POWs, those that fought so bravely to make claims and make amends according to law, according to international law, to amend what had been done to them.
Now, the President tells us we'll get frivolous lawsuits out of this. We will hamper Iraq's fledgling government's ability to rebuild itself.
Now, there are several big fallacies in that statement. The first is the assumption that the fledgling government is doing anything to get itself back and rebuilding. And I offer the fact that Iraq said last year they would put in $10 billion of their own money to put into reconstruction. An audit at the end of last year indicated they spent 4.4 percent of that. Spent it. It doesn't necessarily mean that it went to reconstruction, which basically says 95.6 percent never made it out of the bureaucracy, never made it to the Iraqi people, never did any of that.
Mr. BRALEY of Minnesota. Reclaiming my time, I want to share a personal experience I had serving on the Government Oversight and Reform Committee when we investigated the very problem that you're identifying. And we saw the photograph showing fork trucks carrying $2.1 billion of cash bundled up on pallets as part of the largest 1-day transfer of cash in U.S. history that led to the missing funds you're talking about. Over $2.1 billion of cash sent in 1 day, and yet the Iraqi people who are in need of the assistance are unable to identify where that money went to. There's a similar problem with our inability to identify large amounts of weapons that are unaccounted for in Iraq. And I think it gets back to the much deeper question of whether the American taxpayers are getting their money's worth for the contributions that this country has made investing in the rebuilding of Iraq. And I just wanted to offer that and offer it up as an opportunity for you to comment.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Absolutely. And the point that the gentleman from Iowa has brought up is exactly this: When you dig into this and you start peeling back the onion of what's happening here, you start to see a pattern. And the issue here is this administration, as much as they want to talk
about the rule of law, as much as they want to talk about giving people recourse on this, they have slammed the door into 17 brave warriors, slammed the door in their face, of saying they should have the ability to recoup some of what they gave up for this Nation. And it wasn't our Nation paying for it. It was the Iraqis who were responsible for that torture, for that mistreatment.
And I think many of us ask the question, what message does this send to the people who are fighting around the world? What message does this send to them? You can torture the Americans and if you cut a good enough deal, there will be no recourse. There will be no recourse against the people who carried it out. There will be no recourse to allow for those people to receive compensation. I think it sets an incredibly poor precedent. It disrespects the service of these brave warriors, and it sets us up for failure in the future of these things starting to happen. So when we see this and when the American people ask us, why didn't anything get done? I'll have to tell you today's a pretty sad day. The President did sign the DOD authorization when this provision was taken out. And I think many of us who voted on this in the first place put together a good compromise bill. We find out that when any legislation goes up the street to Pennsylvania Avenue, the people's will in this House matters nothing, the people's will to make sure that this was righted. The 17 families that have asked for recourse on the damages that were done in the name of this Nation were wiped away with a single signature by the President, and this House is left at the horrible choice of do we continue to hold up the research funding for warriors' injuries? Do we continue to hold up the funding for weapons systems to protect them? Do we continue to hold up the pay raise to these soldiers and to their families who are fighting, or do we make the compromise to move that forward and fight another day?
And I quite honestly have to commend my colleague from Iowa. He will fight every day for what's right. This is a question of justice. This goes at the heart and soul of our rule of law and our justice system and a citizen's right to recourse, to petition, to be able to go to a court of law to hear their discussion in a public court of law, to have their peers make a decision. But as we know, this administration, given the opportunity, would shut those same doors to justice to many of us here.
We hear about clever arguments on tort reform, and I know my colleague from Iowa is very familiar with this, but it's pretty much the same thing; that if you are injured in a reckless manner, if you're injured or something is done to you, your ability to go and tell your story in front of a jury of your peers and to trust in your peers to make the right decision, they want to limit that, and they say it's all in the name of frivolous lawsuits, as if we could trust the corporate entities over our neighbors, over our fellow citizens. And in this case we told our fellow citizens, 17 of them that are warriors, well, Iraq needs to rebuild and needs to keep that money, which, by the way, as I think the gentleman noted, upwards of several billion dollars that have gone missing.
I will note that payment to Iraqi legislators has come on time every single month. The lifestyle of Iraqi legislators as they took off a month in the heat of August during some of the most fierce fighting that our soldiers were fighting and dying for as they left to their villas is something that I think Americans should take great notice of. So, once again, I think that this was a huge mistake. I think the President put a very narrow special interest ahead of the needs of our fighting soldiers and has set a precedent that I'm afraid we're going to have to deal with in a much bigger manner down the road.
Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Well, anyone who listens tonight, Madam Speaker, to the gentleman's accounts is horrified. And I think to put it into context, make no mistake about it, what happened today in the signing of the Department of Defense authorization bill with these provisions taken out to allow recourse on this is, it is pretty difficult for me to see any way that a decision was made to side with the monsters who carried out this torture and not with those brave Americans who went at this country's call, did our bidding, and then came home to the so-called open arms. And as the gentleman said, having spent 24 years in the National Guard, having trained countless soldiers, many, as you said, served in my unit. I taught them in school. I coached them on the football field. One of the things that was very clear in part of our training, because, of course, it held to those core values of being an American, was the respect for the Geneva Convention.
The Geneva Convention did several very important things. As I said, it upheld those principles of, even in a conflict situation, that the humanity and the humane treatment of other individuals was absolutely paramount
to keeping with the ideals of this Nation. There was also something else very, very important with the Geneva Convention that many of us as soldiers always came to rely upon is knowing that if you adhere to these things, that if other combatants, the enemy you were fighting understood that, one of the things you could do was you could convince people that it might be better to give up the fight. It might be better because you know you will be treated humanely. And there was always great comfort, because it is not the fear of injury, it is not the fear of battle which is there amongst all these soldiers, it is the fear of capture and torture and saying something that may hurt your fellow soldiers that has everyone terrified.
So the idea is that the Geneva Convention was held in the highest esteem. The principles that it was set by were there to make sure that even at the base emotions of war amongst human beings that there was a respect for basic human life. There was a respect when someone was unarmed and unable to fight, that when someone was captured, they would be treated as humanely as possible. And with that being pulled back, I have to tell you, it terrifies me.
And these forgotten warriors are forgotten because they happen to be an inconvenience now. They happen to be an inconvenience to a political ideology. They happen to be an inconvenience because this administration doesn't want to follow the Geneva Convention. This administration, I believe, and members of this administration have called it a quaint, outdated notion that is no longer there. I would argue that soldiers don't see it that way. Soldiers see it as a necessity.
And for many of us, as my colleague has pointed out, it is hard to fathom that an administration that has talked so much about our soldiers would so callously brush aside 17, in this society, 17 warriors held in the highest esteem as a prisoner of war for their Nation and to cast them aside and cut their rights off to any type of recourse. And I can't help but see a pattern here of where the administration's loyalties lie. As Americans are struggling, and we hear about it every day, the economic crisis, they are struggling to make ends meet, and they see $102 a barrel oil. But I don't know where that is able to be rectified in their mind when they see the President walking hand in hand with the Saudi Prince and knowing that every bit of that $102 is going into the pockets of the Saudi Princes, going into nations and going into, in this case, a regime that committed the grievous atrocities against our soldiers and was totally absolved down on Pennsylvania Avenue against the wishes of the 100 elected Senators, against the wishes of the 435 elected Members of this body. And yet tonight, several of us stand here. And I think the outrage and the passion that my colleague from Iowa has shown should be reassuring to the American public that there is a voice there. There is a voice in the wilderness. There is a voice that says this is wrong. This is a wrong that should not be allowed to stand. This is a wrong that I think they want to see, my colleague from Iowa, myself and our colleagues here, stand and speak for what is right.
So again, I can only come to the conclusion, and I ask my colleague if he can find another way of seeing this, what was the benefit of the administration's decision to side with the Hussein regime over U.S. POWs who were tortured? I am still trying to find where there is justification. It doesn't go back to ``we can't hamper the Iraqi from rebuilding,'' because they are not doing that as it is. It can't go back to any precedence. It is in violation of the Geneva Convention, and it flies in the face, as my colleague said, of our basic principles of our Constitution. So I am trying to figure how we would be able to sell this to the American public.
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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. It's interesting on the day that reports are coming out about the 900-plus misstatements leading into the war that were made by this administration that the idea that this had been known for 5 years, that it had been very clear. And I would quote former Republican Senator Allen and current Republican Senator Collins when he said, Protection of American POWs is a vital national security interest, and the goal of rebuilding Iraq should not be viewed as inconsistent with that goal.
Now, what the gentleman from Iowa has so clearly pointed out and the gentlewoman from New Hampshire alluded to is in this idea of this global war on terror, the winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the world, one of the things is what those core beliefs and core values of the United States stand for.
And the gentleman mentioned and talked about on the floor of this sacred ground of democracy, Members of this body have clearly articulated in the exact words that waterboarding is a useful tool; turning someone upside down, stuffing a rag in their mouth and pouring water in their mouth under a circumstance where they believe they are going to drown is acceptable.
Now the idea of me being a history teacher coming to this body out of the classroom that I would ever stand here and speak of things seemed incredible.
But to think that I would stand here and have to define what torture is to other Members of this body is incomprehensible to me. And I tell a story about why this is so important and why we understood Geneva Convention, why we understood that by adhering to these things, it pushed our values forward.
I was teaching a ninth grade history class, and one of the assignments was to go back and interview a family member who had had some type of context in the Second World War, if they could find a grandparent or great uncle or someone. And the ninth graders came back and reported. And I remember a young man named Bill Wilbrand came forward, and he was telling an incredible story of battle, of heroism, of incredible terror and talking to his grandfather, telling him the story where he was captured by the enemy and he was taken away and he was shipped a long distance and put into a POW camp.
And the other ninth graders are like, Wow. That was your grampa? What happened? Well, it was kind of cold and the food was not great but not too bad and, you know, things were okay. And they said, Well, what happened afterwards? Well, he stayed here. He was a German and he was a prisoner of the Americans, and they brought him to Western Nebraska to a prisoner-of-war camp. And he was treated so well, he said, I will stay here and bring my family here, and his family, of course, is American.
The idea was he saw the values. He saw the dignity. He understood what those American soldiers were. They disagreed with the tyranny of the Nazi regime. They disagreed with what was happening, and they would fight and give their lives to stop that. But when an individual came under their care, they were treated with dignity.
And there was a sense of, that word swept through. That's why you had entire units say this is what is happening. The rest of the world saw America as righteous in fighting for the right causes.
Now we are in a situation where we have absolved a stated terrorist state, the regime of Saddam Hussein, and those people who took and tortured American soldiers and said, You know what? It's okay. We will just brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away.
And those 17 families, well, you know, we can't repay up. We will say thank you a lot. We'll stand in front of flags, and we'll pat them on the back. But we won't let them go through the recourse of the courts. We won't let them adhere to the basic values that the gentleman from Iowa said that predated this country, the idea of being heard by a jury of your peers, by getting recourse no matter where you stand in the hierarchy, no matter where you are economically.
But not these 17. They volunteered. They fought to defend this Nation. They served honorably. And they endured some of the most excruciating things that have been described here. And in one easy stroke today, they have been let down.
I don't know what to say when I hear the story of Colonel Berryman. And I think of his family, Madam Speaker. I don't know what words can come off this House floor to tell them the wrong that has been done to them. And it's all going to be done in the name of supporting the troops. It's all going to be done in the typical fashion that it is just us not able to get anything done.
When we made that horrible decision to fund veterans health care, to fund the vehicles that will protect them in combat and to give them a pay raise, to maybe hope that that mother sitting at home can take kids out to the movie on Saturday while Dad is in Iraq fighting for the Nation, we weren't going to hold that up so that was the choice we were given. So I can tell the Berrymans and others like him, Madam Speaker, that I'm sure not proud of that decision, but that's what we are dealing with coming down from Pennsylvania Avenue.