David Obey: “this resolution will be minimally useful at best. I intend to vote for it. But it falls far short of what this House…”

“this resolution will be minimally useful at best. I intend to vote for it. But it falls far short of what this House ought to be doing today. Lou Dobbs two days ago on CNN I think said it best when he said that the reason the Commander in Chief needed to make a public apology for what happened in the prisons in Iraq was not just because that conduct was offensive to the Arab world but because it was offensive to basic American values. And I think Mr. Dobbs had it dead right. Later on in that same program, Anthony Cordesman, a well-known defense expert, made the observation that the worst thing about this from the standpoint of American troops is that because the pictures associated with these violations of human rights will have inflamed the Arab world, that unfortunately it is likely that additional Americans will die because of that. And unfortunately, he also had it dead on. This resolution needs to be amended, and there will be an effort to do that, to amend it to affirm that we need a bipartisan congressional investigation to conduct an investigation into these allegations of abuse, including those by U.S. civilian contractors and other civilians, and an investigation into the chain of command and other systemic deficiencies including the command atmosphere that may have contributed to such abuse. That is the minimum that is necessary.”