Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this restrictive rule for not making in order the Waxman amendment to provide for an investigation by a bipartisan, independent commission of the detainee abuses alleged at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other sites.

Let me say at the outset that the men and women in our armed services ought to be praised for their selfless sacrifices. They deserve not to have their names and their good works associated with the torture and abuse that has been alleged in newspapers and other reports. That is why it is so important to have a complete and full investigation and to receive assurances that torture and abuse are not standard operating procedure in our armed forces, even if torture was authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales. It is not authorized by Congress or by the American people who ultimately get to have the final say.

It also bothers me that these detainees do not have any way of asserting their innocence. The President says they are all terrorists, but what if some of them were cases of mistaken identity? What if some of them had nothing to do with terrorism? What if they have a similar name or a similar appearance, but are indeed factually innocent of all charges?

It seems to me that if the government is so sure that everyone we are holding is a terrorist, there should be no trouble convincing a court, a judge, or a military court. That would be preferable to having the government assert that all of these people are terrorists, just trust us. We cannot allow that type of abuse of power to continue in our name.

This assertion of the right to hold people forever, with no specific evidence and no due process, has not been asserted in an English-speaking country since before Magna Carta, 800 years ago, until this President had the nerve to besmirch the good name of the United States by making such an assertion. This is not how America became the Shining City on a Hill so admired by people the world over.

No executive should be permitted the power to lock people up forever without ever having to prove their guilt. That is a power that I would trust to no man, no king, no dictator, and no President.

Let me say one other thing. Torture and abuse of prisoners is not just a shameful violation of human rights, it does not work. People under torture will say anything. Intelligence professionals know better than to believe or to rely on information extracted under torture. Torture and abuse of detainees is wrong for so many reasons. It is a horrendous practice, it produces nothing but shame and more enemies for the United States, and anger from the rest of the world.

We need to aggressively investigate these abuses and put safeguards and policies into place to prevent them from ever happening again.