Pete Sessions: “I will say something about Senator Reid's, the Democratic leader's, reference to Abu Ghraib, suggesting that this bill…”

“I will say something about Senator Reid's, the Democratic leader's, reference to Abu Ghraib, suggesting that this bill, the legislation in this Defense bill has been held up perhaps because nobody wants to do anything about what has been going on in Abu Ghraib. Once again, it deeply concerns me. Once again, we are having the suggestion, if not a plain statement, that we need to pass legislation and we need to have congressional hearings to stop things such as what occurred in Abu Ghraib. I was a member of the Armed Services Committee. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee. We have had about 20 hearings on Abu Ghraib. But do you know how we found out about Abu Ghraib? We found out about it at a press briefing in Baghdad by a U.S. Army general or colonel who said they had reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib and they were taking steps to investigate it. And they did so. They found people had violated the law. They prosecuted them. A number of them are in jail this very day. We did not need to pass one single law for that to happen because it was in violation of military standards. In fact, none of the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib had to do with trying to interrogate them. These people were not interrogators. They were prison guards, manning the prison at the graveyard shift, who lost their discipline, abused those prisoners, and had no real excuse for it.…”