Mike Levin: “He sets forth what has happened here in terms of abuses and how it hurts our military. It hurts him. It is not just…”

“He sets forth what has happened here in terms of abuses and how it hurts our military. It hurts him. It is not just hurting our honor, it makes their lives more dangerous in case they are ever captured. And he ends by saying: If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is ``America.'' Now, that is a member of the U.S. military. We cannot sweep this under the rug. The investigations so far have swept critical issues under the rug. They are going to surface sooner or later. Better to have an independent commission take a look at them, get it away from any partisanship, and have a commission the way the 9/ 11 Commission was appointed, with five Democratic appointees, five Republican appointees, and have the President appoint the chairman of the commission. But we owe it to the Captain Fishbacks of this world. We owe it to all the men and women who serve so honorably, which is 99 percent, probably 99.9 percent, of our military. We owe it to them to protect them. One way to protect them is to make sure we have a thorough investigation, without these major gaps, as to what went wrong. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that additional material be printed in the Record.…”