Tom Harkin: “issues such as torture and Guantanamo Bay, I have to admit, are somewhat personal to me. It was 20-some years ago--I am…”

“issues such as torture and Guantanamo Bay, I have to admit, are somewhat personal to me. It was 20-some years ago--I am sorry, 37 years ago, now that I think about it, 1970--when I was a congressional staffer on the House side, for a committee that went to Vietnam to investigate our involvement in the war in Vietnam. During that trip over, through a series of circumstances and because of the bravery of a couple of young people, I was able, with two Congressmen--Congressman ``Gus'' Hawkins from California and Congressman Bill Anderson from Tennessee--to uncover the infamous tiger cages on Con Son Island off the coast of Vietnam. What did we find there? Inhuman, degrading, terrible conditions, where the Vietnamese had imprisoned civilians--students, human rights activists, along with North Vietnamese POWs--being tortured almost on a daily basis. It would take me more time than I have this evening to be able to describe to you the horrors we saw when we broke into this prison. It was all done with the full knowledge and consent and supervision of the U.S. Government. That is proven. That is on the record. It is on the record. I saw the damage that it did, what that did to us. We were always saying to the North Vietnamese: Treat our prisoners according to the Geneva Conventions, when our colleague John McCain was there, and others. Yet we were doing the same thing in Vietnam.…”