National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. Yes.

Mr. DURBIN. Through the Chair, I am happy to join him in this effort in which we are trying to have some oversight on tax money being spent on this war. The Senator and I have worked on this concept together. We went back to a day when the Senator from Missouri, Harry Truman, decided to ask the same hard questions of the administration during the Second World War, trying to find instances where tax dollars were being wasted and people were profiteering and soldiers were getting equipment that wasn't up to standard.

I ask the Senator from North Dakota: Isn't it curious that Senator Harry Truman, a Democrat from Missouri who created this commission and asked hard questions, when there was a Democratic President named Franklin Roosevelt, was suggesting that when it comes to profiteering, Congress doesn't do the administration nor the people of this country any favors by saying we are going to protect our own party in the White House? Shouldn't we be dealing with a nonpartisan issue of waste at the expense of taxpayers and, more importantly, at the expense of soldiers?

Isn't it true that at the hearings which Senator Dorgan has chaired bringing together whistleblowers who tell us these terrible stories of waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, that absent these hearings there has been very little done on Capitol Hill by way of oversight of the giants who are winning these no-bid contracts, multibillion-dollar contracts, and wasting too much of taxpayer dollars?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it is the case that whistleblowers from Kuwait, Iraq, and various parts of the United States have come to me and said: What is going on is wrong. We have held some hearings through our policy committee to take a look at it. They have wanted to testify.

Let me give you one example. I talked about Rory before. A man named Rory, an engaging fellow, who was a supervisor at a food service operation in Iraq, he said to us that what was going on was wrong. He worked for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

No. 1, he said we were charging for thousands of meals that we weren't serving.

No. 2, we were feeding the troops food that had expired date stamps on them.

He brought it to the attention of his superiors. They said: It doesn't matter. Feed it to the troops. It doesn't matter.

He said: We had convoys of trucks that were attacked on the road with food in them. He was told: You go into that truck bed and you find out what food has shrapnel in it. If you find good pieces of shrapnel, you give it to your supervisors as souvenirs, but feed the food to the troops.

The other thing that was very interesting, talking about employees of Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, he said: We were told that when Government auditors come around, don't you dare talk to them. You are forbidden to talk to them. If you do, one of two things will happen. You will either be fired, or you will be sent to a part of Iraq where there is active, hostile shooting going on.

This fellow, in fact, was sent to one of the active areas of Falluja. He had the courage, guts, and temerity, and decided he would talk to Government auditors.

It is unbelievable to me to hear a whistleblower say that a contractor which was being paid with Government funds told the employees: Don't you dare talk to Government auditors. If you do, you will be fired.

That is so fundamentally wrong.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, if I may ask one more question, in one of the hearings that I attended, I recall that Senator Dorgan brought in one of these whistleblowers who talked about the monogrammed towels they were charging the Government to be put into certain facilities. The Senator talked about running up the price of gasoline that they were charging to the Government. I hope the Senator will recount those particular instances.

But I would like to ask the Senator, when Members of Congress get up here and say: We love our soldiers and we love our troops and we stand behind them, how can we then cast a blind eye and overlook the obvious? When our soldiers aren't getting the right equipment, when our soldiers aren't getting the goods they deserve, when they are not getting the supplies they need to be safe and successful, how can that reflect any love of our troops? If we are truly committed to these soldiers, wouldn't we be holding oversight hearings, bringing in under oath these whistleblowers and their bosses? Let us bring them in and put them before the cameras and ask them if they are wasting taxpayer dollars and endangering the lives of our troops. Wouldn't that be the true measure of our commitment to these men and women in uniform?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, clearly that is what we ought to do on behalf of soldiers.

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Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield for one last question, what strikes me is there is not a sense of outrage that American tax dollars are being wasted but, even more important, that American troops are being shortchanged.

What do we ask of these men and women in uniform? Quite simply, we say, take an oath to wear this uniform and risk your life for America--how much more could we ask--and they do it. And then they expect from us support--support when they are in the field and support when they come home.

I don't understand why there isn't a sense of outrage in this Congress on a bipartisan basis, on both sides of the aisle, that we are not only being ripped off as taxpayers by these no-bid contracts but that we are shortchanging these men and women who are risking their lives while we stand in the comfort and safety of this Senate.

I know Halliburton is a big political force in this town. I know in some quarters you are not supposed to question Halliburton. This is some sacred institution politically. I don't buy it. I count the soldiers that are putting their lives on the line to be much more sacred and much more valuable than any big, huge, no-bid corporation.

I say to the Senator from North Dakota, we have done this before, the two of us have joined together, and said let's put together a bipartisan commission that will ask the hard questions, a commission that will bring people in and put them under oath, find out if they are cheating us, find out if they are profiteering during a war, find out if they are shortchanging our soldiers, and let the chips fall where they may. If we find there is a violation of law, even if it reaches all the way to the boardroom, so be it.

How many times have we come to the Senate, I ask the Senator from North Dakota, refresh my memory, how many times have we brought this option to the Senate and said to our colleagues, please, for the sake of the troops, let's have real oversight, let's ask these questions.

How many times have we done this during the course of this 3-year war, I ask the Senator from North Dakota who has been the leader in this effort, and I have been glad to join him, how often have we tried?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have had three recorded votes on this, and we have brought this to the Senate maybe six times now, altogether. I know it is repetitious. I know it probably is not pleasant to hear all of these things again, yet I don't think there is any choice.

If I might, just for the benefit of my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin and I began talking about this some long while ago when we began to see the evidence of waste. We have worked at it since then.

When Senator Durbin was asking a question, I described the water issue. I want to read a quote from a memorandum that was written May 13, 2005, an internal Halliburton memorandum, written by Will Granger, the man who was paid with taxpayer funds to do this contract for Halliburton for all of the water issues in Iraq. These are the water issues for the U.S. bases in Iraq that directly affect United States soldiers.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, after wars are completed, history stands in judgment of the leaders, not just whether there was a victory or defeat in the war but whether the war was conducted properly. Almost without fail, history has been a brutal, sometimes difficult judge of the conduct of war. Caught up in concern about protection and security, nations do things which don't stand the test of time and reflection. The man I think was our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, in the course of the Civil War suspended the writ of habeas corpus. By suspending that writ, he held prisoners without charges and without due process for long periods of time. It was controversial. Later on, it was judged that perhaps President Lincoln had gone too far.

In the midst of the First World War, with our concern over espionage, Congress enacted the Sedition Act which unfortunately tarred and condemned innocent Americans, and later on we came to realize that. In World War II, the most notorious conduct by our own Government was against our fellow citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interred in camps, innocent people. I know some of them. I have grown up with some of them. I know they carry scars from that incarceration. Throughout our history, as we reflect, we find there are things we should not have done in the course of a war.

I have said on this floor several times that I believe eventually history will be a very strenuous judge of our conduct in this war on terror when it comes to the use of torture. For decades, the United States had established a clear standard that we would never engage in torture--cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Then after 9/11, in the shock and fear that followed, this administration ended up trying to rewrite the standards for interrogation and torture. It wasn't a proud chapter in our history. We now know the administration abandoned that effort after some time. We know as well that some of the people who were involved in it have been reluctant to even discuss what they were doing. But there was a good ending when last year Senator JOHN MCCAIN offered an amendment in the Senate to state unequivocally that the United States would not engage in the torture of prisoners, not engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners.

The reasons are obvious. Prisoners who are being tortured will say anything. It doesn't have to be true. Secondly, the standard we set in the treatment of our prisoners could one day be used against Americans who are taken as prisoners. So not only does it give you invalid information, it sets a standard that we never want our soldiers to be subjected to.

By a vote of 90 to 9, the Senate enacted JOHN MCCAIN's standard for torture, saying that we were not abandoning our longstanding commitment to it. I was happy to cosponsor that effort. There was a debate where Vice President Cheney came forward and said we need to make an exception for agents of intelligence agencies in our Government. Thank goodness, the Vice President's recommendation was rejected. The President signed it, and I hope he is living by it. Sadly, most of that is being done behind closed doors, and we won't know for a long time, if ever, whether it is being followed. I trust the word of the President when he says we are not engaging in torture. Now comes the next chapter.

If the President's words are an indication, Guantanamo Bay is likely to be closed. That is a good thing. Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners who are being held there have to be moved to a different situation. If they are in fact a danger to the United States or to any soldiers or any person we value, they should be charged and held or held as enemy combatants. But if they are being held for intelligence purposes, we should be honest. After 3 years, for goodness' sake, what value could they possibly bring to our intelligence?

Several hundred men are being held. Last week, there was the startling discovery that three had committed suicide. It is an indication to me that Guantanamo Bay should be closed, as the President has suggested. I hope it is sooner rather than later.

Then what will happen to the prisoners? The amendment I will offer says that if we are going to be involved in the rendition of these prisoners, the transfer of these prisoners to some other place, some other country, we need to make sure that country abides by the same standards of humane conduct to which the United States ascribes. We cannot be content in sending these prisoners to some other place where they will be subjected to torture if, in fact, we have expressed a value in the United States that we are opposed to torture. That is what the amendment will say, that we make that effort to ascertain and to review regularly those detention facilities to make sure they live by that same standard.

There has been a debate this week in Washington over the war in Iraq. It was also a week when the Department of Defense reported that we have lost 2,500 soldiers. White House spokesperson Tony Snow was asked to comment on this loss of 2,500. I am sure the statement he made doesn't reflect what he really feels in his heart when he said:

It's a number.

I am sure he feels as we all do that it is more than a number. It is more than an aggregate. It is 2,500 precious lives that have been lost by men and women in uniform willing to stand and serve and risk their lives for America.

I have attended some of the funerals. They are heartbreaking. Most of the soldiers are very young. I recall going down to southern Illinois where the funeral service was right outside the farmhouse where this young man grew up, down in Perry County. His mom and dad brought out for us to see, around the tent where the service was taking place, little souvenirs from his life--his fishing rods, his hunting rifle. We were just a few feet away from the tree house he and his dad built. I will never forget that scene as long as I live. It was a reminder that before he was in uniform, he was a son, he was a boy. Their heartbreaking experience will be with them for a long time.

There are 2,499 other stories just like that of grief which will be shared by families for years to come.

We are debating now what should we do in Iraq. The idea that we pull out our troops quickly, precipitously, is unacceptable. It would leave a situation which I am afraid would descend further into chaos and maybe create more instability and more problems to come.

But here is what worries me. When the President of the United States goes to Iraq and says to our enemies in Iraq that we are here to stay, that may be a strong message to our enemies of our resolve, but it is the wrong message to our allies and friends. The Iraqis have to understand we are not going to stay indefinitely. Think of what we have done in this country, not only giving 2,500 of our best and bravest lives, not only having 20,000 of our soldiers come home, half of them with serious permanent injuries, 2,000 of them with head injuries, not only spending $300 billion in behalf of this effort in Iraq, not only sacrificing at home where we can't afford to fund medical research, Amtrak, education, health care, and the programs which Americans value, not only all these things, but we have been successful; we have deposed their dictator, Saddam Hussein; we dug him out of a hole in the ground and put him on trial.

We have given the Iraqis more than ample opportunity to control their fate and future. We offered them free elections. We have given them a chance to form a government. We have given this country so much in the 3 years we have been there. Now we must say to them: The day has come when you must stand and defend your own country. If you value Iraq as a nation, be prepared to stand and fight and maybe even die on behalf of that nation. But if we say to the Iraqis that we are staying there indefinitely, it is the best deal on Earth because it is the best military on Earth that will be there for them serving as a babysitter and a referee in an ongoing civil war for an indeterminate amount of time.

How many more lives will America give to this conflict before the Iraqis stand and defend their own nation? And when the President and many in the Chamber here don't want to speak to any kind of withdrawal date, they are suggesting to the Iraqis we are there to stay. That is the wrong message. We need to tell them that we have fought and offered our best for their future and that they need to accept that responsibility from this point forward.

This week, I stood in silence at my desk on the floor of the Senate with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in reverence to the 2,500 lives that have been lost, saying a prayer for their memory and their families, thinking as well of the veterans who have come home, some broken in body and in spirit, who have done so much for this country. We owe it to them, we owe it to their families to reach a point where we can come home with our mission truly accomplished.

It is more than just a number. Mr. President, 2,500 of our soldiers have given their lives. When this came up initially, I voted against authorization for war. I believed at the time that the administration had misled us as to what was happening there, this threat of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons and connections with Ð9/11. It turned out they were all false. None of it was true, and we went to war anyway. We were told as soon as we arrived that the Iraqi Army would turn on Saddam Hussein and join us in the fight, and that didn't happen. We were told the Iraqi people would greet us with open arms, and I know many are appreciative for what we have done, but it is still so unsafe in that country. The average soldier just going down the street in a military vehicle is risking his life every single day, more than 3 years after our invasion.

Having voted against that authorization for war, though, I have voted for every penny this President asked for. I lived through Vietnam. I remember what happened. An unpopular war was taken out on our soldiers, and that is not fair. Our soldiers did what we asked of them in the Vietnam war, as they are doing today. Politicians and elected officials can debate and differ on policy, but the bottom line is our soldiers are serving us and we should stand by them. I voted for every penny because of one basic standard: If it were my son or daughter in uniform, I would want them to have everything they needed to come home safely. That is the way I feel, and that is why I voted this week for the supplemental appropriation. But that won't stop me today and in the coming days from challenging this administration and challenging this Congress to make it clear that the Iraqis have to stand and fight and defend, and the American troops are coming home. It is only when that happens that we can truly say that our mission is accomplished.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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