Patrick Leahy: “as we go out of session for the long recess at the end of this week, I am disappointed to report that Congress seems…”

“as we go out of session for the long recess at the end of this week, I am disappointed to report that Congress seems content to let the issue of foreign prisoner abuse linger without effective congressional oversight. The House Armed Services Committee made it clear weeks ago that it believed the ongoing military investigations into the abuses were sufficient. Until today, the Senate Armed Services Committee had not held a hearing on the prisoner abuse issue in more than a month. Chairman Warner called a hearing this morning to hear a report on one of the investigations: an assessment of Army detention operation doctrine and training, completed by the Army Inspector General. Waiting for the administration to investigate itself is not the answer. There are at least four completed and seven ongoing military reviews into the treatment of prisoners held in detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. While these reviews are necessary, they fail to address critical issues: What role did White House officials, the Justice Department and other agencies play in developing the policies that allowed these abuses to occur? The military investigations may uncover what went wrong at the bottom of the chain of command, but it will take aggressive congressional oversight to discover what went wrong at the top of the chain. We need to get to the bottom of this scandal, but we also need to get to the top of it.”