GOP Senator Warner to get to the bottom of prison tortures.
Even if it costs Bush the White House.
from salon.com
June 2, 2004 | WASHINGTON -- John Warner does not shout. Or pound the table with his fist. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has -- in public, at least -- been patient and polite in his questioning of administration witnesses about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, maintaining the formality and decorum he values in public life. Behind closed doors, however, the Virginian has surprised observers with occasional flashes of anger at Donald Rumsfeld's evasions, according to people who have attended private committee meetings with the defense secretary. "He gets a stern look, and becomes real quiet. He doesn't say anything, but it's obvious when he feels he is getting anything less than candor," one of those present said of Warner.
Warner, some of his Senate colleagues told me, will not be cowed into halting the politically wrenching hearings on prison abuse. He is motivated by a strong sense of duty to get to the bottom of a scandal that has deeply scarred American credibility in the world and contributed to growing disapproval among voters of President Bush's handling of Iraq.
Through a spokesman, Warner declined to be interviewed for this story. But at a hearing last month, he called the prison abuses "as serious an issue of military misconduct as I have ever observed" and "an appalling and totally unacceptable breach" of military standards.
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While some of his more outspoken colleagues on the Armed Services panel can be flashy bling-bling, capturing the sound bites, Warner's style is more like a strand of pearls: elegant, polished and deceptively tough. The Navy and Marine Corps veteran doesn't pick many fights, but when he does, it's for what he considers strong principles. Which is why the five-term Republican is potentially more threatening to Bush's effort to tamp down the public outcry over Abu Ghraib -- and to his reelection -- than all of the Democrats on Capitol Hill combined.
What should be most worrisome to Bush, perhaps, is that the last time Warner took on something this big -- a showdown with conservatives in Virginia over the Senate candidacy of Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, darling of the right wing -- he won decisively. "He wants to get out the truth," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a former Army ranger and paratrooper who has been one of the leading critics of the administration on the Armed Services panel. "He knows that if we're going to stand in the world for the rule of law, we're going to have to ourselves stand for the rule of law."
With Congress returning to Washington this week from its Memorial Day recess, the Armed Services Committee is expected to schedule new hearings soon on an investigation by Major Gen. George Fay, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, into whether military intelligence officers directed the sexual abuse and torture of Abu Ghraib prisoners. Reed and other committee members fear a Pentagon coverup, questioning whether Fay can credibly investigate his own intelligence operation.
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