WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats and Republicans assailed Bush administration officials on Thursday for submitting a vaguely worded request to add $25 billion to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning Oct. 1.
The new funding would be added to the more than $400 billion already sought for military uses worldwide in fiscal 2005. But lawmakers complained bitterly that the request lacked specific details and sought to circumvent the Senate's oversight role.
"This is a blank check," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., spoke for virtually all senators when he predicted the Senate would approve the extra money to pay for fuel, body armor, troop transport and supplies, but not without some strings.
"I'm going to support this $25 billion," said Byrd. "But we're going to put limitations on it."
With monthly war expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaching $5 billion a month, next year's total cost "is $50 billion to $60 billion," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told senators. "If you look at our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's a big bill."
At a contentious three-hour hearing in which one Senate Democrat accused Wolfowitz of botching his job and veteran senators clashed over the scope of the Armed Services Committee's questioning, the military's interrogation techniques also came under fire from some senators who said they violated the Geneva Conventions.
Under questioning from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Wolfowitz and Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that taken individually, some of the approved interrogation techniques could be interpreted as violating the conventions.
But Wolfowitz said Reed's hypothetical example of a prisoner who was hooded, stripped naked and forced to crouch for 45 minutes "goes quite beyond what is permitted." On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that the U.S. military in Iraq is adhering to the conventions.
The double-barreled jousting over two sensitive issues of the administration's Iraq policy — cost and prisoner treatment — underscored the growing unrest on Capitol Hill over the handling of operations there.
Early on, the hearing veered toward a major partisan clash when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., objected to an effort by the committee's chairman, Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., to limit the scope of senators' questions to the $25 billion reserve fund.
"I've been on this committee for 24 years, I've been in the Senate 42 years, and I have never been denied the opportunity to question any person that's come before a committee, on what I wanted to ask for it," Kennedy thundered. "I resent it and reject it on a matter of national importance. And we're talking about prison abuses."
Warner backed down, noting that Wolfowitz's opening statement had opened the door to a broader line of questioning.
That decision allowed Reed's pivotal questioning, first of Pace: "If you were shown a video of a United States Marine or an American citizen in the control of a foreign power, in a cell block, naked, with a bag over their head, squatting with their arms uplifted for 45 minutes, would you describe that as a good interrogation technique or a violation of the Geneva Convention?"
"I would describe it as a violation, sir," Pace replied.
Reed then cited a list of interrogation techniques approved for use in Iraq last October by the top commander there, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. Some techniques required Sanchez's approval, including sensory deprivation, solitary confinement beyond 30 days, and "stress positions" — prolonged periods of standing or crouching.
"As I read Gen. Sanchez's guidance, precisely that behavior could have been employed in Iraq," said Reed.
But defense officials said after the hearing that Sanchez has never been asked to approve such harsh treatment in Iraq, and that Reed's example would not have been approved.
Pace and Wolfowitz acknowledged that neither had seen the list of approved techniques, called "Interrogation Rules of Engagement" until just before the hearing on Thursday morning, and did not know whether senior defense officials had vetted them. Senate Democrats said the title was inappropriate given that "rules of engagement" in military parlance govern the use of force.
The hearing's most heated exchanges came between Reed and Wolfowitz.
"What I've heard from you is dissembling and avoidance of answers, lack of knowledge," Reed said.
"I'm not dissembling, Sen. Reed," Wolfowitz shot back. "I have Gen. Pace's same reaction. What you described to me sounds to me like a violation of the Geneva Convention. It's the first time I've heard that it was in Gen. Sanchez's direction."
"I would suggest, Mr. Secretary, that you're not doing your job, then," said Reed.
Warner and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the panel's ranking Democrat, briefly intervened but Reed quickly returned to grilling Wolfowitz.
"Mr. Secretary, do you think crouching naked for 45 minutes is humane?" asked Reed.
"Not naked, absolutely not," said Wolfowitz.
"Sensory deprivation, which would be a bag over your head for 72 hours," Reed continued. "Do you think that's humane?"
"Let me come back to what you said, the work of this government" Wolfowitz said.
"No, no," said Reed, interrupting. "Answer the question, Mr. Secretary. Is that humane?"
"I don't know whether it means a bag over your head for 72 hours, senator," said Wolfowitz.
"Mr. Secretary, you're dissembling, non-responsive," said Reed. "Anybody would say putting a bag over someone's head for 72 hours, which is —" "I believe it's not humane," Wolfowitz interjected.
On his flight to Iraq on Thursday, Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him that the Geneva Conventions were open to interpretation.
"There are always going to be differences of views as to whether something does or doesn't" adhere to the conventions, Rumsfeld said. "The test is what is decided and what is issued, and then is it adhered to."
By the end of the Senate hearing, Wolfowitz seemed frustrated with the questions about prisoner abuse, and had raised a white flag on the complaints about the reserve fund request, promising to work with the committee to provide more details.
In its formal four-page submission, the White House gave only the scantest breakdown of the $25 billion, noting that the largest portion, $14 billion, would go toward Army operations and maintenance. Wolfowitz stressed that the Pentagon would seek additional spending early next year.
"We need to strike the right balance here between the administration's understandable need for flexibility and the congressional need to closely oversee spending," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "You don't need this dispute."
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., raised questions about the Iraqi prison situation Thursday in another context, urging Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate how the Justice Department selected civilians to oversee the prisons, including a Utah official linked to charges of prison abuse in the United States.
The Utah official, Lane McCotter, resigned under pressure as director of the state's Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled, naked, to a restraining chair for 16 hours. He later became an executive at a Utah company that ran a private prison in New Mexico criticized by the Justice Department for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates.
McCotter was tapped by Ashcroft last year as part of a civilian team of U.S. law enforcement and incarceration officials assigned to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq's police, corrections and judicial systems.