Yesterday I had wrote a post about Jamie Leigh Jones, the young woman who was raped in Iraq while working for KBR, a former Halliburton partner. Yesterday on Glenn Beck he had on his radio program Texas Congressman Ted Poe. I like this Mr. Poe. Here is some of the transcript from the show.
- GLENN: From WOW FM in Des Moines, Iowa, hello, you sick twisted freak. Welcome to the program. Glad you're here. So much to do today. We have Ted Poe on with us, Congressman Ted Poe. Is he there now? Congressman, how are you, sir?
REPRESENTATIVE POE: I am doing excellent, thanks.
GLENN: I'm so glad to have you on, and I have to tell you, sir, out of all of the people that are in Washington, you are really, truly one of the good guys and one of the brave people that we have in congress and you just never seem to be willing to give up on different issues and you also don't come down seemingly party lines. You will take on right and wrong first, not left and right.
Congressman Ted Poe (R - TX) - REPRESENTATIVE POE: Well, that is correct, but most issues are right and wrong, not partisan at all and you just have to do what's right for the people and for the country.
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: We don't know. They probably were but they may not have been. There were more than -- there were several of them and some of them may have been Iraqis or some other nationality.
- GLENN: Okay. But she was brutally raped. Then she went to the hospital, got a rape kit. She then went back. It's my understanding that Halliburton took that rape kit, she's never been able to have the rape kit, she was thrown into a cargo container, one of those big container units that, you know, they put on big ships. She was locked in there, given a bed, couldn't use a phone. A guard took pity on her and gave her the phone. She called her father. Her father called you, but this was two years ago, right?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: That is correct.
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: Well, as soon as I got the call from her father who was, you know, tremendously excited and worried, we contacted officials at the State Department and within 48 hours they had two agents there in Baghdad and found her, rescued her. And she needed much more medical attention, and she received that and finally was brought back to the United States very shortly thereafter.
- Then things seemed to have just fallen off the radar...
- GLENN:...What does it tell you how something like this could happen to an American citizen with most likely American employees and an American company and nobody pursues it for two years?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: It's very disappointing and it's unfortunate. You'd think in a situation like that, that a 22-year-old female that's been sexually assaulted, really brutalized, that not only our government but the corporation that she works for would side with her and do everything possible to make sure her medical needs were met and the people who did this were held accountable, but --
- GLENN: They didn't only rape -- the employees raped her, but the company kidnapped her, imprisoned her.
- GLENN: So what happened? When you have been pushing for the last two years, "Hello, is somebody looking into this," what has happened along the way? What kind of answers are you getting from anybody?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: No answers at all. I suspect that there has been some preliminary investigation, but the point is I want results. We need results and what are the results. And we haven't heard those results. And what probably, what I think has really made this thing now take some initiative, because of the right of privacy that she's had and we have, you know, kept her identity and situation confidential, as we should, but when she decided to go public and let the world know what happened to her, now we are able to make sure that the federal government says, understands that this is something now the American people know about happened and they want some results.
- GLENN: I have to tell you, you know, there's -- I got mail from people who questioned her credibility, why is she going public. Wouldn't you? If you waited two years for the Government to take care of it, wouldn't you? I don't think I would have waited two years.
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: Well, a lady in that situation who's brutalized and, you know, thousands of miles from home and has nobody and alone, we can't really second-guess what she does as a sexual assault victim. She did what she thought was best. And we didn't get any results from our government and so she's made the choice to go public, which is a difficult situation for any sexual assault victim to do, and whether this happened or not, well, the proof is in the medical. The medical reports are -- without question show that she was brutalized over there in Iraq and now people need to be brought to court and held accountable and let's air it publicly now and find out who was there, who was responsible and why nothing happened until recently.
- GLENN: I read a report and I believe it was a State Department person said that nobody really even broke the law because the laws of Iraq can't be enforced and the laws of the United States don't apply. Is there any truth to that?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: No. As a former judge and prosecutor, there is federal law that applies to this case and here's the reason. The jurisdiction of where this happened in the green zone, in Camp Hope in Baghdad is under the jurisdiction of the State Department and since it's under the jurisdiction of the State Department, federal law does apply and people can be prosecuted for crimes against American citizens.
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: It could happen anywhere up and down the chain. I don't know where it fell apart. Probably initially it fell apart over in Baghdad. But now the attorney general, the new one is aware of this. We want --
- GLENN: Hang on. Are you implying that the last attorney general you don't think was aware of it?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: I don't know about the last one, but the new one is hopefully the new one.
- Congressman, you know and I know we are dealing with something that is -- I mean, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist because I'm not. I don't want to believe the things that I am beginning to believe because it's on the verge of insanity, but I have to tell you, at best our government is making so many bad steps that it makes them look like there is a shadow power that is not doing the American thing, has no one to answer to except themselves. We're seeing it with the fence in Mexico, we're seeing it with the still 21 missing Americans that have been kidnapped across our border and no one's doing anything about it. We're seeing it with this. A company can actually hold someone, kidnap them, hold them against their will and the government does absolutely nothing, and a congressman like you is beating the drum and beating the drum and you can't get any answers, who the hell has power in this country?
- REPRESENTATIVE POE: Well, the people still have the power and we are going to get answers in this situation. In fact, Chairman Conyers of the judiciary committee is contemplating holding congressional hearings on this case and other similar cases that have happened overseas very shortly and I hope he does that.
GLENN: Yeah. Okay, thank you very much.
REPRESENTATIVE POE: Okay.
GLENN: You bet, bye-bye. Congressman Ted Poe who is quite honestly I think an American hero today.
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