Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I am happy to yield to the Senator from New Jersey for a question.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of Senator Byrd's remarks, I be recognized to get back on my amendment. Also, I inquire of the Senator approximately how long he wishes to take.

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

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3191, which is at the desk.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I pose an inquiry. I am prepared to discuss this amendment and move forward with it. I was advised that possibly the Senator from West Virginia wishes to use this time to make some remarks. I say to the Senator, if he wishes to do that, I would be happy to defer.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me say that the remarks of the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the senior Senator from Virginia, are indeed disturbing because it would be the first evidence in this conflict that the chemical weapons Saddam Hussein once had and which we had no evidence of destruction might now be surfacing and might be used against our troops. It is, as he said, important that we continue to pursue this. We hope it is a single event rather than something that will repeat itself. But in any event, it brings home the seriousness of the proposition. I commend him for not only bringing it to our attention today but also for the work he and the committee have put into bringing this Defense authorization bill to the floor. It is a difficult time. We are not only focusing on the multiyear transition of our force structure but also the bringing of new technology to our military in an evolutionary way at the same time we are trying to provide the resources necessary to fight the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other resources for the war on terror and building up our intelligence capabilities through the Defense Intelligence Organization and others. This is a very complicated and difficult time in defense planning. The bill the committee has put together is a very well-structured and a very forward-leaning bill, as well as a bill that takes care of the troops who are being put in harm's way today. I commend the chairman and members of the committee for the fine product they have put before us. I will speak today primarily about one aspect. It is not the war on terror but rather the way in which at least an element of high technology is being integrated into our forces to meet a different kind of challenge. It illustrates the fact that at the same time we are fighting this war on terror and the action in Iraq, we also have to think about the other challenges we are going to be facing in the future and be prepared to deal with them at that time. It is unfortunate but true that the sophisticated weapon systems that are available to our troops today were on the drawing boards maybe 20 years ago and did not go into production until a few years ago because of all of the work that has to go into their development and their testing and their ultimate deployment. We do not have the ability to simply snap our fingers when we need a new weapons system and bring it online immediately. It takes years of work to get it to that point. A good example is, and a system we had to rely on to some extent in the first gulf war, in the area of missile defense. Missile defense has been with us ever since the pronouncement of President Reagan in his great announcement in the early 1980s that with the advent of ballistic missiles, a genie that would never be put back into the bottle, we were going to have to develop effective defenses against them or they would be the weapon of choice in the future for the delivery of high explosive but potentially nuclear weaponry, as well as chemical or biological weaponry. As a result, President Reagan embarked upon a scientific venture to find a way to intercept missiles. There was a great deal of research that went into this. Frankly, we came close during the end of the Reagan administration and first part of the first Bush administration of actually being able to deploy missile defenses. But one of the arguments opponents always made was more testing was necessary and we should not actually go to the deployment of the system until we could better prove it could defeat any conceivable threat. At the time, the potential enemy was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did, indeed, have a sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile system, one that required us not only to defeat a rudimentary kind of missile but one that might have decoys, that might have other kinds of penetration aids, ways defensively to throw our interceptor missiles off course. So there was always a game being played between perfection being the enemy of the good versus actually getting something deployed that would take care of most of the threat. At the end of the day, there was not sufficient support in the Congress to actually deploy a system, as a result of which a great deal of time and money was spent on ballistic missiles but nothing was ever produced. Along came the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration also understood that especially with the rise of the threat from North Korea, Iran, and China, as well as the leftover threat from the Soviet Union, but in a much more benign setting now that Russia was emerging as the power out of the ashes of the Soviet Union, there was still going to be a need to deploy some kind of system. As a result, the Clinton administration decided upon a ground-based system of 100 interceptors primarily potentially at a site partially, at least, in Alaska that would be our basic way of beginning to deal with ballistic missile threat. Even the Clinton administration understood this was not the be-all and end-all. This would not necessarily be the end of the development of ballistic missile interceptors because as the offense became more sophisticated, so, too, the defense would have to become more sophisticated. But it was a way to begin the deployment and deal with the threat from a rogue nation, a nation like North Korea or Iran, for example, which would not have the sophisticated penetration aids of a nation like the Soviet Union. The question then came when the second Bush administration came to power, would it be possible for us to move away from the constraints of the ballistic missile treaty, the ABM treaty, to actually think about deploying more sophisticated and capable systems that were not permitted under the ABM treaty. It was agreed with the Russians that a new treaty would replace the ABM treaty, a treaty which would permit both countries to get rid of most of their offensive weapons, their nuclear weaponry, and much of this was to be delivered on top of ballistic missiles, as a result of which the means for delivery of those nuclear weapons would be eliminated as well as the nuclear weaponry itself. That decision was made and an agreement was entered into between the United States and Russia, and as a result, the United States began to think about a more creative way to actually deploy a rudimentary missile defense system. By then, the threat from Russia had eroded and we saw primarily the threat from the so-called axis-of-evil countries as the one we were going to have to deal with. The decision was made, since we wanted to put something into place quickly, that what we would do is combine the initial deployment of the system with continued testing so we would actually have a test bed available to us to provide the real conditions for a real test; have a real missile defense system in place to actually do the testing that would be the most sophisticated and end part of the testing program. We went through a series of tests that were highly scripted, that told us what we needed to know about the component parts of the system, and it was time to put it in operational mode to test it in that mode. GEN Ron Kadish, the general in charge of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, put it very interestingly: The criticism we get is that we are not operationally testing the system before we put it in place. My response to that, which people don't seem to want to accept, is you can't operational test the system until you put it in place. Of course, General Kadish is exactly right. You can only do so much hypothetical testing. There is a point at which you need to put it in place so you can go forward with the operational testing. This was the concept the Bush administration decided to pursue. It is strange that very concept now is being criticized and presumably will be the subject of amendments that will be offered in the Senate to take away from funding for the ballistic missile defense system. It will generally contend that more testing is required; that in effect we need to test this until we are absolutely certain it can do everything it needs against every potential adversary without question, by which time many years will have passed, much more money will have been spent, and we still will not have anything to show. It might be interesting to note that during the first gulf war we were actually exposed to the rationale for proceeding as we are proceeding with the missile defense system. At that time, Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia, at Kuwait, at the U.S. forces there, at the country of Israel, and there was no missile defense system in place at that time. The Israelis did not have the Arrow missile which they now have and which we hope will provide an effective missile defense system against something like the Scud missile for the state of Israel. What we had was an anti-aircraft missile called the Patriot. It was a very capable system. But we needed something to defend against the Scuds. Very hurriedly we sent to the theater batteries of Patriot missiles. Literally, on the way, as they were being prepared for transit and in transit and as they were being set up, we were adjusting the computer components, the radar connections and tracking systems and the like, to try to make these Patriot systems more robust, more capable, faster acting, more discerning, so they might actually hit a ballistic missile rather than an airplane, which is what they were designed to be against in the first instance. Lo and behold, it turned out through the ingenuity of people literally on the ground, the Patriot missile system was made to be somewhat effective against some of these Scud missiles. Certainly not as effective as a finely developed missile defense system would have been, but the point was we made do with what we had because we did not have a choice. We were in the middle of a conflict and we had to come up with some way to defend our troops and defend our friends. Lest my colleagues forget, remember, the single largest number of casualties in the first gulf war against Americans, 28 were killed when a Scud missile hit an Air Force base with American airmen and others present. It demonstrates you cannot wait until you have the perfect system. When you are in a conflict with people and they are working as fast as they can, it helps to have something ready to go even if it is not perfect. That was the reasoning behind the Bush administration's decision to move forward with the development of the system and not wait until every conceivable aspect of testing could be done, but to actually get it up to the point where it could be deployed for operational testing, and at that point we would be able to literally kill two birds with one stone. We would not only have an operational test bed capable of continuing to perform the tests necessary, but we would also have an operational capability of some robustness, probably not enough to defeat a Russian missile, should one be launched by accident, for example, but certainly one that might be sufficient to take out a North Korean missile. The thinking was that not only would you serve these two purposes, but you would also serve another very important purpose; and that was to discourage the countries that were beginning to proliferate weapons of mass destruction, and the missiles to deliver them, from developing these missile systems because of the notion that whatever they did, however much effort and time and money they put into it, we would have a way of defeating it, so it would not be worth their while--in effect, a deterrent, to say: The United States will not permit you to have an effective missile against us, so do not bother to try to develop and deploy it. We believe that could be important because of some things I will say in a moment relating to the exchange of information between countries such as China and Pakistan and North Korea and Iran and other countries that began to proliferate components and technology for the trading of these missiles. So the threat would not be just from one country but would be from several countries. We have to nip this in the bud, and developing a good missile defense would be one way to do that. So from the original notion, which, as I said, was to have 20 missiles in combination between a site in California and a site in Alaska, to the development of another 10, which would be put in Alaska, and then another 10, following that, at a site to be determined--and this is the so-called missiles numbered 31 through 40. These are not yet funded. They are part of a long leadtime funding that is the subject of this bill and which might be the subject of an amendment. Let me go back and put all this into perspective. The Defense bill itself is just a little over $10 billion for ballistic missile defense research and development. It is key to the development and deployment of this capability about which I have been speaking. The threat from ballistic missiles is not waning; it is growing. Today there are nearly three dozen countries, according to our intelligence, that have or are developing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. It includes the two remaining ``access of evil'' members, Iran and North Korea, as well as their fellow terrorist regime Syria. Some of the latest developments, which unless indicated otherwise, are all taken from the DCI's most recent semiannual ``Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Conventional Munitions,'' are as follows: First, North Korea: It continues its development of long-range missiles. Its Taepo Dong 2 missile, which is capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized payload, may now be ready for flight testing. So this is not a hypothetical threat. The Channel NewsAsia reported earlier this month that Pyongyang is nearing formal deployment of the Taepo Dong 2 and is now gearing up to test engines for the missile. Recent press accounts have also raised the possibility that North Korea is working on new intermediate-range ballistic missiles. According to a May 6 Los Angeles Times article, the South Korean press has reported that two new missile bases are under construction in North Korea. These bases would reportedly be used for a new missile capable of reaching U.S. bases in Guam and possibly Hawaii. North Korea not only presents a problem because of its own capabilities but also because of its proliferation of ballistic missiles and related technologies to potential adversaries of the United States. According to the DCI report: Throughout the first half of 2003, North Korea continued to export significant ballistic missile-related equipment, components, materials and technical expertise to the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa. Recent press reports indicate that Kim Jong Il has been negotiating with the Iranian regime on the sale of the long-range Taepo Dong 2. Iran: The DCI report says: Ballistic missile-related cooperation from entities in the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and China over the years has helped Iran move toward its goal of becoming self- sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles. Iran's ballistic missile inventory is among the largest in the Middle East. Last June, Iran made some significant advances in its program, conducting a successful test of the 800-mile-range Shahab-3 missile. If operational, this weapon could alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, placing Israel and U.S. bases in Turkey within Iran's reach. Iran is also seeking to produce a 1,200-mile Shahab-4 missile. According to CIA Director George Tenet's recent testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Iran, as North Korea, has been willing to supply missile-related technology to countries of concern. The PRC, the People's Republic of China: In addition to the threat posed by the development of ballistic missiles by terrorist-sponsored regimes that I have noted, we should not forget about the improving capabilities, as well as the WMD and ballistic missile proliferation, of the People's Republic of China. The intelligence community's most recent report on foreign ballistic missile development assessed that China could begin deploying its 5,000-mile-range DF-31 missile during the first half of this decade. China's even longer range ballistic missile, the DF-41, could be deployed in the latter half of the decade. I remind my colleagues this is now 2004. China also has approximately 500 shorter range missiles aimed at Taiwan. According to an article in today's Washington Post, the Chinese Government warned Taiwan's President to pull back from ``a dangerous lurch toward independence''--their words--``or face''--and I am again quoting their word--``destruction.'' Given that warning, as well as numerous others like it, the United States should take very seriously not only the missile threat posed to Taiwan but also that posed to the United States. Finally, despite relatively new missile-related export regulations, Chinese entities continued, during the first half of 2003, to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic missile projects. Additionally, during that same time, Chinese firms continued to provide materials or assistance to the ballistic missile programs in Iran and North Korea. So you see a combination of countries willing to work with each other toward the development of these missiles, all of which could be threatening to the United States and our interests. So what will missile defense deployment accomplish? Well, as I said, both defense and deterrence. Deployment of the layered missile defense system will permit the United States freedom of action by eliminating the possibility that we would be susceptible to nuclear blackmail by a country such as North Korea. Missile defense will also reduce the incentives for proliferation by devaluing offensive missiles. If a rogue actor views missiles as less likely to be effective because of our defenses, he will also be less inclined to spend as much time or money trying to acquire them. Finally, missile defenses, in a worst case scenario, will save Americans lives. This is worth doing. I would like to quote again General Kadish, who made this point earlier this year. He said: We should not choose to be vulnerable. We have proven that from a technological standpoint and a practical standpoint we can intercept ballistic warheads in flight. And to say now that we can technologically defend ourselves and then choose not to is, in my view, a recipe for failure. The first obligation we have as legislators, as opinion leaders, as leaders in this country, is to ensure the defense of the United States of America and American citizens. We have to do that with the development of ballistic missile defenses because it is the one threat that exists against us which we do not yet have a capability of defeating. But we are on the verge of deploying that capability. We have to proceed with it and not retrench under the rubric of ``more testing is necessary.'' There are challenges. The ideological opposition to missile defense, unfortunately, still exists. Last year was the first year that the President's overall request for missile defense was met. In the previous years it had not been. In fiscal year 2003, ballistic missile defense research and development had been reduced by $80 million, and the year before that by $530 million. In addition to that, restrictive language has been adopted by this body, creating a false choice between two alternatives, which I will speak to in a moment. Last year's authorization for the fiscal year 2003 Defense authorization bill required the administration to decide whether $814 million would be spent on missile defense or terrorism. This was money that the administration had requested for its missile defense organization, and it was spent on that. But the President, in effect, was faced with a false choice. Which one, in effect, critics were asking, was more important? Of course, the bottom line is, they are both important. In the United States, we have the capability of doing both. Indeed, we have no choice but to do both. In fact, we have no choice but to do several things in this defense budget. You cannot decide that one is more important than the other and, therefore, you have to forego spending on one for the benefit of the other, if you have the capability of funding them all. So missile defense versus the war on terror would, indeed, be a false choice. It is clear that we have needs in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror, but we don't have the luxury of confronting those needs while at the same time overlooking or ignoring the ballistic missile threat from a country such as North Korea or Iran. I ask my friends, who were so shocked that something like 9/11 could happen, what their response would be if one of those missiles were launched against the United States, if we had no defense against them landing on one of our cities. I would hope those who have been opposing the deployment of missile defenses would acknowledge responsibility in that environment. Let me respond to one potential amendment that might come up and then conclude my remarks. I have talked about the fact that there may be an effort to cut money from the Missile Defense Program to fund some other program such as armor for Humvees or vests for our soldiers or something of that sort. All of these things are being fielded as quickly as we can field them, as my colleagues well appreciate. In other words, diverting money now from missile defense to more body armor or armor for Humvees won't speed up 1 minute the deployment of that particular defensive equipment in Iraq. For whatever reasons, there will be an effort to take money from the ballistic missile program and apply to it those kinds of programs, I suppose, because they would presumably have a great deal of public support. I reiterate, those programs are totally funded today and are being provided, and we do not need to take money from the ballistic missile defense program as part of this Defense authorization bill. The funding that is provided in the bill will allow the construction and implementation of the ballistic missile defense test bed that will be used to conduct more realistic system-wide tests at the same time that it provides a near-concurrent initial operational capability in case of an attack. As I said, it is consistent with President Clinton's proposal for national missile defense that planned to deploy 100 ground-based interceptors. This will provide for the addition to the initial 20 interceptors at Fort Greely and Vandenberg Air Force Base, of 20 additional ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely, at sea, and perhaps even at some overseas location to be determined. The budget request specifically in the chairman's bill makes a downpayment on the ground-based interceptors Nos. 21 through 40. It is the long lead funding to provide: No. 1, additional test articles necessary to conduct planned future integrated flight tests--and I pause here to say, for those critics who say we need more testing, this is the money for the testing; so if you vote to cut this money, you are actually cutting the money for more testing; No. 2, an expanded interceptor inventory to address estimated growth in foreign ballistic missile threats; No. 3, maintain steady industrial base production lines for the interceptors and kill vehicles in the event an expanded inventory is deemed necessary; and, No. 4, ground-site preparation activities for interceptors Nos. 21 through 30. Any cuts to the ground-based missile defense deployment that is contemplated will cripple effective deployment of the initial test bed system that itself will allow for more realistic testing. So if you accept the notion of and assumption inherent in capabilities-based acquisition and spiral development, then criticisms about insufficient testing before initial deployment of this ballistic missile system are simply invalid. I commend the chairman and the committee for their great work in bringing this bill to the floor and finally funding our missile defense system so that we can not only continue the testing that is so important, but also at the same time provide some initial capability should we need that capability. I hope my colleagues will join together, support the chairman, support the committee, support the President in what he is trying to do, and not engage in a thousand cuts that could end up crippling this program yet once again, getting us to the point of deployment but no further than that point. I urge my colleagues to support the chairman and the committee and defeat such amendments.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, Monday the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 2:30 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., the Senate will begin consideration of the Defense authorization bill. The chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee will be here on Monday to begin working through amendments to the bill. Chairman Warner and Senator Levin have indicated they will have an amendment to be voted on at approximately 5:30 on Monday. Therefore, the next rollcall vote will be at 5:30 on Monday afternoon. It is the leader's intention to complete action on this bill next week. Therefore, Senators who wish to offer an amendment are encouraged to contact the bill managers as soon as possible so they can schedule floor time for consideration of amendments. Also on Monday we are hoping to consider the bioshield legislation under an agreement. Senators Gregg and Kennedy will be here and available to begin consideration of that bill shortly after noon, if that agreement is reached. If we are able to consider the bioshield legislation on Monday, we would delay passage of the bill until Tuesday. Moments ago cloture was filed on the nomination of Marcia Cooke to be a district judge for the Southern District of Florida. If necessary, the cloture vote on the Cooke nomination will occur on Tuesday, May 18 at 2:15 p.m. In addition, yesterday we locked in a short time agreement on H.R. 3104, providing medals to our soldiers participating in Operating Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The vote on passage of this bill will occur on Tuesday as well. We have a very busy agenda for the next week, and the majority leader encourages all Members to plan for votes throughout the week.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 12 noon on Monday, May 17; I further ask that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin a period of morning business until 2:30 p.m., with the time equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; provided that at 2:30 p.m., the Senate begin consideration of Calendar No. 503, S. 2400, the Department of Defense authorization bill, as provided under the previous order.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I announce that discussions are continuing to find a way to work through the judicial nominations that are pending on the Executive Calendar. We had hoped to begin scheduling the noncontroversial judges for votes by the full Senate. At this time, there are still objections to scheduling these votes and, therefore, it will be necessary to file cloture on one of these nominations today. Having said that, the majority leader is still hopeful that an agreement can be reached and that this cloture vote will not be necessary.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this vote occur at 2:15 p.m., on Tuesday, May 18, and that the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 363 which was submitted earlier today by Senators Coleman and Dayton.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The Tucson Citizen's article in part reads as follows: The abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison violated all training standards for Army interrogators and has commanders and students at Fort Huachuca angry and fearful of potential repercussions. ``It's anathema. It's not what we train. It's not our values,'' said Maj. Gen. James Marks, commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center. ``I can't fathom who would do that * * * I'm disgusted by it. Those aren't interrogation techniques. That's a bunch of rogue soldiers conducting evil acts.'' Just a couple other sentences from the article: Many at Fort Huachuca, home of the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade which includes the training programs for interrogators and counterintelligence agents, say the actions of a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib have cast a pall on the Army's intelligence-gathering community. It goes on to note that ``it reflects on the rest of us that are training to do the right thing.'' And just one other quotation from General Marks: We do not authorize any form of hands-on in terms of use of our interrogation techniques. The article goes on to talk about precisely what kind of interrogation is permitted, what the techniques are to get information. But it makes it very clear none of the things that have been depicted in these photographs are even remotely authorized. So it actually ties in with the article from the New York Times that this could not have been done by military intelligence to gather information from these prisoners. That is an important point because some have begun to question the morality of our involvement in Iraq and the mission which so many of our young soldiers have put their lives on the line to achieve, and now several hundred have died to achieve. One of our colleagues made the point this prison had done horrible things under the regime of Saddam Hussein, and now it was open under new management, namely the U.S. Government. I find that statement to be deplorable because it suggests a moral equivalency between what the U.S. stands for and has done and what Saddam Hussein has done in that same prison. We have heard about and seen some evidence, and I believe there will be additional evidence coming out that reveals what Saddam Hussein did to people in that prison--the torture, the rape, the murder--absolutely despicable actions that have absolutely no comparative value to what occurred--if on more than a couple of occasions--by a handful of American soldiers who did wrong and who will be punished for doing wrong. The difference between our morality and the morality of Saddam Hussein is it was his intention to inflict this kind of despicable horror, and the magnitude of it was horrific, whereas in the United States, we stand for exactly the opposite. We will punish those who conducted this kind of activity and we will make it clear that is not our standard. Again, the moral equivalency is so utterly lacking it is amazing to me anybody would even try to make that connection. This is especially sad in the week in which Nick Berg's death was brought home to us in such a graphic way by the same kind of terrorists who held sway in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. This is the kind of enemy we are fighting. It requires us to take stock about what we need to do as policymakers in discussing this publicly, because the message we send to the world, to terrorists, and to the Iraqis in particular, is going to play a large role in how people view our effort and, therefore, whether it can succeed in the long run. If our leaders are criticizing our effort as an immoral effort, as nothing more than a continuation of what Saddam Hussein was doing, then it is doubtful our effort can succeed. Americans must stand up for what is right in this country and what they know our country to be, and we must make it crystal clear to the rest of the world we have a moral purpose, that we do have a commitment to the rule of law, and anything that goes outside of that rule of law will be dealt with appropriately. That is the difference between our society and the society we replaced in Iraq. That is very critical for us to discuss and to not have our leaders undercutting us and, therefore, calling into question the legitimacy not only of the mission but of the activities of our soldiers and others fighting this war. The third article I would like to discuss is an op-ed, actually, entitled ``The Abu Ghraib Panic,'' May 14, Washington Post, by Charles Krauthammer. As usual, it takes a person such as Charles Krauthammer to put this into perspective. He always comes to the rescue when policymakers and pundits and others begin to fly off on tangents that miss the point, that begin to take us down the wrong path in terms of a logical analysis of what is going on. He tends to bring us back to the central point we need to consider and discuss and the policy that needs to be carried out. His op-ed today brings us back to the central point by beginning with the discussion of those who have called for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense. He points out this exercise is what he calls ``ministerial responsibility''--the notion that, in some parliamentary governments, if something goes wrong down below, the leader of that particular department resigns, or offers his resignation, in order to demonstrate the responsibility of the government. He points out that is not a doctrine that has held in the United States, where there is no responsibility of the individual involved. Indeed, he points out even when there is responsibility for the individual--the higher up individual--and that individual takes responsibility, it has not been the case in this country to call for the resignation of the individual. The example he gives is the one of former Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno, who not only was on duty when the Branch Davidian compound in Waco was attacked by American forces in 1993 but ended in the deaths of 76 people. She not only was on duty, but she ordered the attack, which resulted in, among other things, the death of 20 children. That was an awful event. She took responsibility for it. She said, ``It was my decision and I take responsibility.'' There was much applause for her willingness to do that. But she didn't resign. She was not asked to resign. She was not fired by the President, notwithstanding her direct responsibility for what had occurred. Compare that to the case today with Secretary Rumsfeld, who, by all accounts, has done a tremendous job at the Department of Defense. He has successfully executed two wars. He is trying to transform our military. He is now involved in an effort to ensure the security of Iraq so power can be turned over on June 30; and a handful of soldiers, at a very low level, in a prison in Iraq commit crimes against prisoners somehow becomes his direct responsibility, such that he has to actually resign from his position in order, somehow, to demonstrate the morality of our position there. He doesn't have to do that because it was not his responsibility. He was responsible for saying the laws of the Geneva Conventions apply. He was trying to make sure everybody under his command was doing their duty. In no way will it ever come to pass that responsibility, in terms of culpability for this action, went very far up the chain. As a result, it is more a frustration that some people don't know anything else to do that they call for his resignation. Of course, there is a political component, too. The President's enemies use this as a way to get at him. One can expect that in a political environment. But it has severe consequences when people around the rest of the world begin to think this is the opinion not only of key policymakers in America but represents a policy that should be carried out by our Government and, if it is not, somehow our Government is very wrong. So there are consequences of the people who discuss this in that light. As Charles Krauthammer points out, that has never been the standard in the U.S. If you look to the case of Janet Reno, where there really was culpability, and yet she wasn't fired, or she did not resign, you can see this could be, in the case of many people, a political exercise rather than an exercise in responsible criticism. The point Krauthammer tried to make here is this whole business about Secretary Rumsfeld is a sideshow, in any event, and that what is happening is some Americans who are not adequately grounded in what this country is all about, what the war is about, are beginning to panic. Let me quote something and then wonder aloud. He says: The panic is unseemly. The pictures are shocking and the practices appalling. But how do the actions of a few depraved soldiers among 135,000 negate the moral purpose of the entire enterprise--which has not only liberated 25 million people from 25 years of genocidal dictatorship, but has included a nationwide reconstruction punctuated by hundreds, thousands, of individual acts of beneficence and kindness by American soldiers? Indeed, this panic, I believe, is due, among other things, to the fact that America has enjoyed such success and has had to sacrifice so little in recent time that Americans unfamiliar with the sacrifices and the moral purposes of previous engagements, such as World War I and World War II in particular, and Korea and Vietnam, unfamiliar with the horror of war and the requirement of a citizenry to back their fighters with steadfastness and courage and support, rather than panic at the first sign that something is going wrong. This panic is due to a citizenry today that may not have been adequately educated to the fundamental purposes of why we are there-- and to the extent that is the policymakers' fault, I will take responsibility for that as well--and perhaps are insufficiently grounded in the kind of conflicts we have fought in the past and why it was so important for the citizens in doing their part to support the effort and not panic at the first sign that something was going wrong. I think of D-Day, the anniversary of which is coming up soon, and the terrible decision General Eisenhower had to make with the weather forecast suggesting a very difficult crossing of the channel, the predictions of German fortifications having been weakened being wrong so that when our troops hit the beaches, they were cut down by withering fire, the great number of casualties at Omaha Beach and all the rest where we thought it was going to go better than it did, and second-guessing of our generals all the way up to General Eisenhower would certainly have been warranted. But the American people did not do that, and the British people did not do that. Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other leaders rallied the American people and the British people, the allies, to support the cause, notwithstanding the number of casualties that were occurring, notwithstanding the fact that efforts were going wrong. This is what President Bush has tried repeatedly to do, to say: Look, we knew when we went into this it would be difficult, it would be costly, it would take a long time. I remember his State of the Union Address in which he said that, and it has been repeated many times since. I think one thing we all appreciate about President Bush is that he does have a resoluteness, a willingness to make tough decisions and then the courage to stand by them. But we Americans have to back him in that. You cannot panic when the going gets tough. And in war, sometimes the going does get tough. This is a case where it was due to our own fault. Some of our own soldiers did something very wrong, and we have to deal with that. But that is not a reason to panic and believe that the effort in which the other 135,000 are engaged is wrong or is falling apart and cannot be achieved. It is rather a time for us to go back to our moorings, what Americans believe in and what we understand was the purpose of this effort, and do what we can do in this effort, which is to support the effort, to support the decisionmakers, to support the Commander in Chief and, most of all, to support the troops. I think of Pat Tillman, who played football in my home State, who decided to forego a lucrative football contract with the Arizona Cardinals because he wanted to do his part in this effort. He went to Iraq and then went to Afghanistan and was killed there. He did his part. The challenge to us is, what can we do? We cannot go over there and fight, but we can sure do something to support those who are doing the fighting. I do not mean we cannot question. That is our job. We do not just meekly go along with what everybody says about this, but we can certainly not do anything to undercut the effort of those putting their lives on the line. That is what we can do. That is our part. And it starts with not panicking, as Charles Krauthammer said. Things go wrong in war. They went wrong in every war we fought. We practically got pushed off the Korean peninsula in the Korean war. Then General MacArthur, in a brilliant move in Inchon, landed behind enemy lines, drove the enemy back, and did what Americans always do in the end: We succeed when we do not panic. I suggest to those who are wringing their hands today about what is going on in Iraq to just take a deep breath, stiffen your spine, and remember what this country has gone through in its great history. We have sacrificed a lot and it has been for good, moral purpose, and such is the case in Iraq. Let me quote again from the Krauthammer op-ed: We are obsessing about the wrong question. It is not: Is our purpose in Iraq morally sound? Of course it is. The question today, as from the beginning, remains: Is that purpose achievable? Then he goes on to say this: Doability does not hinge on the pictures from Abu Ghraib. It hinges on what happens on the ground with the insurgencies. The greater general uprising that last month's panic-mongers had predicted has not occurred. The Sadr insurgency appears to be waning. Senior Shiite clerics, local leaders and demonstrators in the streets of Najaf have told Moqtada Sadr to get out of town. Meanwhile, his militia is being systematically taken down by the U.S. military. As for Fallujah, we have decided that trying to fully eradicate Sunni resistance is too costly in U.S. lives. Moreover, this ultimately is not our job but one for the 85 percent of Iraqis who are not Sunni Arabs--the Shiites and Kurds who will inherit the new Iraq. We have thus chosen an interim arrangement of local self-rule in the Sunni hotbeds. And if that gets us through the transition of power to moderate Iraqis, fine. This seems entirely lost on the many politicians and commentators who have simply loss their bearings in the Abu Ghraib panic. The prize in Iraq is not praise for America from the Arab street nor goodwill from al-Jazeera. We did not have these before Abu Ghraib. We will not have these after Abu Ghraib. The prize is a decent, representative, democratizing Iraq that abandoned the pan-Arab fantasies and cruelties of Saddam Hussein's regime. That remains doable. What will make it undoable is the panic at home. As I said, as usual, he is right on target. So what does that teach us? Getting back to the beginning of the discussion of the Secretary of Defense and his responsibility, let's be careful of the message we send to the rest of the world. Some of my colleagues have said the Secretary must resign because we need to send a message to the Arab world. What message is it? That we are sorry? We have sent that message. That we take responsibility? We have already taken responsibility. I think it sends a message of weakness. Remember what the mantra of Osama bin Laden is--that there are weak horses and strong horses, and the world will respect the strong horse. He believes he is the strong horse, that we are the weak horse. He cites over and over Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam, and he believes that Iraq falls into the same category; that if his al-Qaida and their allies in Iraq can continue to inflict casualties on us, if we continue to have self-doubt, disunity, undercut our leadership, panic over what a few of our soldiers did in the prison, in the long run he will prevail because he is the strong horse and we are the weak horse. That is his entire philosophy, and it motivates a lot of people in that part of the world who hate us. The way to defeat that philosophy is to be the strong horse because of our morality as well as our military power, because of what we stand for in terms of returning freedom to people who did not have it, and because we do not mean to gain anything personally from it except an additional degree of security from terrorists. Mr. President, what we say matters. We need to conduct the debate and, indeed, a debate is entirely appropriate, but we need to conduct the debate in a way that will not undercut the effort of those who are putting their lives on the line. Sometimes even words in this Chamber go over the top. Sometimes words of my colleagues go over the top. Certainly, there are many outside of this Chamber who reveal a panic of the kind that Charles Krauthammer has written about, which will undercut our ability to carry out our mission, and that, at the end of the day, is the important point. So I urge my colleagues and all others who are discussing this issue to try to conduct the debate and discussion in a serious, responsible way that does not undercut the efforts of our leaders and our troops on the ground. If we do that, then we will have done our part in achieving victory. We will have been responsible. We will not have undercut the effort, and I think we will have distinguished ourselves in the one way that we can act to achieve victory. Teddy Roosevelt made a comment that kind of wrapped up what he did in life with all of the actions in which he engaged. Somebody asked him a question about his life and he said: I just have appreciated the opportunity that I have had to work on work worth doing. What we are doing today is work worth doing. We need to remember that, be supportive of it, and be supportive of those we have asked to do the work. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to talk about the prisoner abuse in Iraq and how it ties into the conduct of our war there to ensure that we can prevail in this struggle in which we have engaged. I want to begin by talking about a New York Times newspaper article this morning which I think puts into better perspective the nature of the offense that has been committed in that prison and then move to a discussion of how our troops are trained to conduct investigations at a military installation in Arizona, my State, and conclude with remarks that were offered this morning in an op-ed piece by Charles Krauthammer that I think puts all of this into a perspective that we would do well to pay some attention to. Let's begin with the last 10 or 12 days of discussion about what occurred in the prison in Iraq and how that has affected public opinion about the morality of our effort there. There has been a lot of speculation. I have urged colleagues and others to avoid speculating until the reports are in, until the facts are before us, because speculation cannot only lead to wrong conclusions, it can actually damage our position around the world. Some seem all too anxious to prove that what happened there had to be the result of orders from higher-ups, that it just couldn't possibly have been the actions of a few soldiers acting in a very wrong way; it had to come from higher-ups. It is possible there were some orders from higher-ups that had an effect, but sometimes there seems to be almost a desire, a hope that we will find it was the orders from somebody higher up, and the political implications of that are obvious. I have seen speculation that because families and friends of some of these soldiers, understandably, were in disbelief that their friend or child could have done this without being ordered to do so, that, therefore, is proof the order had to come from above. It is not proof. The defense is understandable. It may or may not be true. But what is becoming a little bit more clear is that, despite the number of photographs, these incidents appear to have been isolated, to have occurred on few occasions in one place by a very few people without having been ordered from above. This is the point of a New York Times article of today, ``U.S. Soldier Paints Scene of Eager Mayhem'' at Iraqi prison. It is the story of the statement given to investigators by SPC Jeremy C. Sivits who is under court-martial. The statement was released by a lawyer for another soldier. That is how the New York Times acquired it. The sense of the story is that Specialist Sivits described a scene of misconduct by a few of his colleagues: . . . not authorized by anyone in the chain of command and with no connection to any interrogations. Of course, we have seen a lot of speculation that it must have been ordered, it must have been in connection with softening up the prisoners. The first clear word of what happened by someone who was willing to talk to investigators and admit his own culpability in the process suggests that is not true. Let me continue to quote: The soldiers knew that what they had done was wrong, Specialist Sivits told investigators, at least enough to instruct him not to tell anyone what he had seen. Specialist Sivits was asked if the abuse would have happened if someone in the chain of command was present. ``Hell no,'' he replied, adding: ``Because our command would have slammed us. They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would be hell to pay. The story goes on to note that this activity occurred at least in his presence apparently only on two occasions, most of it on one particular evening, and that at one point a sergeant heard the commotion and looked down to see what was going on and yelled at them in anger to knock it off. The story obviously concludes that this is, according to this specialist, a case of bad behavior by a few people who obviously had inadequate supervision but who were not doing this to soften up prisoners or doing it at the command of anyone. And, indeed, they knew if their commanders found out there would be ``hell to pay.'' This is important because if it is true, what it demonstrates is that what we have been saying all along is right. America does not conduct its interrogations this way. It does not contain and handle prisoners this way. This conduct was an aberration. It will not be tolerated. The guilty will be forced to pay, and we will try to understand what is necessary to implement to see that it doesn't happen again. Secondly, if in fact this is correct, as the New York Times has reported, it is not just these people who will pay but their immediate superiors who allowed them to conduct this activity. Because even though those superiors may not have known about it or certainly participated in it, they created the circumstance under which this could occur. They bear some responsibility as well. What about the interrogation techniques? There has been a lot of speculation about that. First, the official U.S. Government policy, the official Defense Department policy, is that the laws of the Geneva Conventions will apply in Iraq, period. There is no exception for really bad guys. There is no exception in order to extract information. Some confusion exists because of the fact that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to a group such as al-Qaida. That is a fact. It is not something subjective. The reason is because by the very terms of the Geneva Conventions, they apply in cases where countries have signed the conventions, and they apply to situations in which you have an army, a military force that wears uniforms, that does not conduct activities against civilians. In the case of the al-Qaida, none of those conditions applies. Technically the laws of the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al-Qaida. That is a true statement. Because people have made that point, there has been then a leap to the conclusion that, therefore, the U.S. Government is mistreating al-Qaida. But that is not true. Our policy is that notwithstanding the fact the Geneva Conventions don't apply to al-Qaida detainees, the humane treatment called for in the Geneva Conventions will still be the rule, the law, the order of the day for our handling of those prisoners so that the same kind of treatment that is required by the Geneva Conventions will even be applied to people who are not technically entitled to the protection. That is our official U.S. policy. It is trained at Fort Huachuca, an Army base in southern Arizona, which has a mission, among other things, to train interrogation and collection of intelligence. Let me read a couple of items from an article from the Tucson Citizen of May 13. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a May 14 article from the New York Times, a May 13 article from the Tucson Citizen, and an article to which I will refer, an op-ed piece by Charles Krauthammer, dated May 14, from the Washington Post.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, first, I commend the Senator from Texas for a fine statement. I note that his coming to the Senate and joining the Judiciary Committee has been a tremendous asset for that committee. His leadership of the subcommittee which he chairs and the serious and complete way in which he addresses issues has really helped us to tackle some of these very difficult issues. I appreciate his leadership very much. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 20 minutes in morning business.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, perhaps drawing on his experience as a Governor, has been eloquent in detailing the burdens this Federal statute has placed on States. I trust that as the final bill language is crafted, he and his colleagues will be striving to ensure that the need to provide parents with appropriate mechanisms for vindicating their due process rights will be balanced appropriately against the imperative not to impose excessive new burdens on state governments.

Mr. KYL. I certainly understand the concern that this provision could have unintended consequences. I hope that in conference this language can be clarified to focus on the achievement of outcomes through the development of a sound remedial plan, overseen by the Department of Education. Many of us have expressed concern over the cumbersome litigation sometimes associated with IDEA. This language could make the status quo worse--tying up critical personnel and diverting scarce resources, without ensuring positive outcomes.

Mr. KYL. I would also like to congratulate the senior Senator from New Hampshire for his success in getting this legislation this far through hard work and bipartisanship. We recognize that securing consensus necessitated compromise on a position we all share: that schools should be able to maintain a single standard for discipline. Like Senator McCain, I am very pleased that this legislation repeals the ``stay-put rule,'' a major priority of Superintendent Horne and other education leaders in our state.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, we are here this afternoon debating the nomination for the position of Ambassador to Iraq, the nomination of Ambassador-nominee Negroponte, a career diplomat who probably has as long and good a record in the United States as any person who has served in our Foreign Service. He started in 1960 representing the United States. He has had an amazing array of important posts, including being Ambassador to the Philippines and Honduras and Mexico, and serving in a variety of other international organizations. I hope, at the conclusion of our debate today, the Senate will, in fact, confirm the nomination of Ambassador-designate Negroponte. We need the very best in Iraq. It is a challenging situation. There is no doubt about that. We need somebody of his caliber there. I am delighted the President has found it possible to find such a good person to be the first ambassador to this newly freed country. I hope, as I said, we will be able to confirm him quickly and that he will be able to assume his post. I think a lot of the Members have found this as an opportunity to discuss the larger issue of the war in Iraq and how it is going and particularly in light of the events of the recent days regarding the revelations of the treatment of certain prisoners in Iraq. I think it is appropriate we all reflect on that, but I also think it is important we keep it in perspective. I just gave a radio interview in which the questioner asked questions that suggested maybe the wheels were coming off the wagon, that the entire effort might not be worth it; that one of our colleagues in the House had indicated that maybe we are losing the war and we ought to recognize that right now. I want to focus a little bit on that because, as we have a new ambassador about to assume the position there, he might rightly ask the question, What am I getting into here if we are about to lose a war? And the question is, Are we? And, of course, the answer is, No, we are not. I think it would be well for Americans to stop and think before they talk in those terms because the mere discussion of the issue in those terms gives solace and encouragement to our opponents. Unlike a war that we fought in the past--you could choose your examples--this war on terrorism includes components that have a lot to do with psychology, with what the enemy believes he can accomplish using asymmetric force against far superior forces of the allied coalition. Therefore, it is important what the enemy reads into what we are saying about the war ourselves. That is why, in effect, the floor of the Senate and the media are other fronts in the war. When we ask what we can do to help our troops, one thing we can do is think clearly about this and speak in a constructive, positive way, which is not to say we should never express disagreement with each other or with the administration or offer constructive suggestions about what to do better. All of that is fair game in a democracy and makes us what we are and makes for a better conduct of any kind of operation, including a military one. But there is a way to do it that does not give encouragement to the enemy. When you begin to suggest that because of what a very small handful of Americans did to some Iraqi prisoners, that it somehow suggests we are losing the war, we have gone way off track. I realize most people are not saying that. I hope they don't. That is the kind of expression that will be the beginning of the end of our effort to conduct the hearts and minds part of this war on terror which is almost in some respects as big a part of it as is the military conquest we were so successful in achieving in Iraq. How should we be conducting ourselves? We are part of this war effort. We are not carrying a gun. But people listen to what we have to say. The terrorists take away from what we say either encouragement or discouragement. I return to the memo we intercepted from a fellow by the name of Zarqawi. He was sending a memo to his fellow terrorists connected with al-Qaida saying: We have a real problem here. The Americans are winning in Iraq. They are defeating our brothers, and we need more allies. We need people to pour into Iraq to assist us. I fear we are losing the battle because we can't get enough help and the Americans are too tough. They are winning the country over, and before long they are going to have a new government set up here and we will have lost this effort. That was this terrorist's assessment of the situation. I like that assessment. What it shows is the planning and execution of our military effort and the followup of the military effort after we took Baghdad and had conquered the country, that that has largely succeeded. For most of the country we know it has. We have two pockets of significant resistance with which we are dealing. There the tension is between going in and doing collateral damage or trying to negotiate, which is what we are being urged to do by people on the ground, Iraqis who, after all, are making a point that they might have some idea about how to do this since they know the folks involved and it is their country. They are going to have to take care of this in the future. So we are paying attention to what they suggest. We are trying to walk a careful line in dealing with these two situations. But by and large, the point is, the country has been pacified. There has been so much constructive accomplished there in terms of getting the country's infrastructure back to work, getting oil production going, getting the schools and hospitals back up to speed, all of the other aspects that have begun to return the country to normalcy, that we tend to forget all of the good and tend to forget that the security of the country has largely been obtained when we see on the nightly news only one thing and that is the latest explosion that killed either an American soldier, perhaps, or innocent Iraqis, because a lot of the people who are being killed are Iraqis themselves. That is the bad news. Notwithstanding the news that we get all of the time, the terrorists are saying: We are about to be beat here because the Americans and the other allies have been able to marshal the military power to subdue our brothers. Without new reinforcements, we are likely to lose this battle. That is a nice assessment. It gives us encouragement that if we continue on this path, we will prevail. We have a strategy laid out to turn authority over to the Iraqis to govern themselves on June 30 and proceed to have elections in the country next January. Hopefully, we will continue to consolidate the security and so on. We are aware of those things. Therefore, it is especially distressing when people who are important people in America, perhaps elected officials, speak out on television and suggest that, because of these most recent events, somehow we can't win this battle; We can't win this war; We can't continue to consolidate the gains we have made, continue to provide security, continue to help in the reconstruction of the country, and continue on the path of turning it over to the Iraqis so they can freely govern themselves. Let's take each of those points. First, no one in America condones or in any way expresses anything but disgust for what we have seen on television and what we have been reading about. It is un-American to treat people the way these Iraqi prisoners were treated. It doesn't make any difference what they might have done. Americans don't do that. The President today, in meeting with King Abdullah, publicly said he was sorry for this. He was also sorry that a lot of people in the world would take this incident as manifesting what Americans and America are all about. He said that bothers him, and it obviously bothers all of us because we know that is not what we are about. The question is, This aberration, as it has been described, should that in any way suggest to us that we can't win this conflict? I fail to see a connection. I understand that among a lot of Arabs and, frankly, the rest of the world, including in the United States, people are appalled. But anyone with an open mind who has any understanding of the United States and of Americans understands that this is not the way Americans act and, in point of fact, that we have a system which encourages reporting of such incidents and which immediately ensures that the perpetrators will be dealt with in an appropriate way. It is my understanding--and we will find out a lot more about this as time goes on--that the day after the report of the incident the inquiry began which resulted in military action, court-martial action being taken against several of these perpetrators, and subsequent to that, action has been taken against several people and that there are some that are still pending to be resolved. It is also my understanding that within the same month of January, a command had already been set up to investigate whether this was endemic or widespread, whether it really was an aberration and, to the extent that it demonstrated that there were flaws in our system that permitted this to occur, that they be fixed, and that things have been implemented to ensure this will not happen again. I suspect as we are briefed on all of this we will learn a lot more of the detail, and we might be more comfortable with the way the military has handled this. This is what America is all about. There is some fault, not only for the people who actually did what we have seen but also for the way it was handled. What I regret is that many in the political world have tended to focus on this. I would hope that opponents of the President would not seize upon this to try to gain partisan advantage. It is something that reflects on the entire country. It is not a Democratic or Republican kind of issue. There have already been calls for the resignation of Secretary Rumsfeld. This, obviously, would not help the President politically, but is it appropriate? The Secretary will be presenting open testimony tomorrow before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He will tell his story. Until he does, I think it would be wise for people to withhold their judgment. Since we have not even been briefed on the issue--and that is one thing people complain about--would we have a right to call for somebody's resignation before we have even heard what they had to say or been briefed? Is that an American way to do things or is it an expression of partisanship? I suggest to the extent it might be the latter, people should hold their fire and wait until the facts come in, and we can discuss this in a nonpartisan and a constructive way rather than a way that might be misread by our enemies, because the more this kind of criticism occurs, the more the enemy may take from it that America is divided and we no longer have the commitment or the will to see this conflict to an end; that therefore if they continue to try to nip away at us the way they have been, they will be able to drive us out, and they will have the country left to them to resume the kind of rule that Saddam Hussein exerted in that country for decades. We cannot allow that to happen. I think there is a legitimate question about when the people in the policymaking part of the Government--and that includes the Assistant Secretary, Secretary of Defense, National Security Council, the President, and Vice President-- became aware of things like the existence of photographs and other things which, if made public, would certainly significantly detract from our effort. These policymakers would clearly have understood that is the kind of thing that can undo countless hours of good work by thousands of military and non-military personnel in the country. Just one incident like this can undo all of the good that literally hundreds of people do. We have all seen the acts of kindness as well as bravery by our troops. We have seen soldiers helping kids in school--saving a little child in one case and a woman in another case--from being in the line of fire, one of whom had been wounded. There are countless Americans acting unselfishly and, frankly, selflessly, putting themselves in danger to help Iraqi people. That is a message that obviously needs to be conveyed, but all of that is, in a sense, forgotten the minute you have an incident like this, especially with the photographs showing this. I can understand how someone who committed these atrocities, unthinkingly, would have no idea about how this might affect the entire war effort when it becomes known, but people higher up certainly would have that sense. It was important that they get this information so they could then decide what to do with it. Undoubtedly, in America, ordinarily, we understand that the best way to deal with bad news like this is to deal with it in an open, honest fashion. I suspect that had we been able to do that, a lot of the outcry here might have been averted. That might have been included in briefing Members of Congress. But if the Secretary of Defense didn't even know of the existence of the photographs, it is kind of hard to brief Congress about it. I suggest that the bottom line on this point is that we find out what the facts are by asking the people directly. Let's stop condemning them publicly and calling for their resignation and stop assuming facts we don't know. During a radio interview that I just had, the questioner asked me about a certain situation. I said: I don't know that to be true. Do you? He said: No, but that is what we have heard. Let's see what the truth is, and we can act in a calm, compassionate, and firm way with those who did wrong. My final point is that in the fog of war a lot goes wrong. Individual people make bad judgments. Americans are just as prone to that as anybody else. There is a lot of pressure and emotions run high, and it is certainly possible for people to do wrong. One of the candidates for President this year talked about atrocities he committed, or saw committed, in another war in our history. It happens. It is not right, and people should be called to account for it when it happens. But let's remember, too, that everything in war is not coming up roses every day, and that there will be days of bad news. If you stop to think about World War II, for example, or about Korea, or any other wars we have fought in, you can find some very bleak days, days when Americans were being pushed off the Korean peninsula, days when we were being pushed off Omaha Beach, or times when we were making no progress and were taking thousands of casualties on the Pacific islands. Our own prisoners were horribly mistreated, and there must have been a sense that this may not be worth the effort. Americans understood the stakes and we persevered. In war there are going to be times that are bad. We understood that. Sometimes they are caused by enemy action and sometimes by mistakes we ourselves might have made. This is one of those times when we have a real problem because of mistakes that Americans made. But we have the capacity as a Nation to correct those mistakes if we will do that in a constructive way. That is the key. But if we do it in a partisan way, in a destructive way, we will only play into the hands of our enemies, who are looking for that kind of signal so they can succeed in their effort. As we conclude debate on the nomination of a critical position at this time in our history, the ambassadorship to Iraq, it is good to reflect on these issues. The Ambassador will have a very difficult job. I hope as we consider his nomination and how to support him when he assumes this role, we will all agree it is important to do so in a constructive way, always giving him our best judgment, but not undercutting him with premature judgments or actions that might be construed as political and might be misunderstood by our enemy. If we conduct ourselves in that way, I am confident that, despite the fact there will be days we feel very challenged in this country and, as the President said, things we are very sorry for, nonetheless, because of the kind of people and Nation we are and the values and principles for which we are fighting, we will in the end prevail, and we will prevail not only to the benefit of Americans and our national security, but for the cause of freedom of people throughout this world.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator from Iowa and I thank the Senator from North Dakota.