I am a member of an action alliance called the People’s Email Network. They create email forms so that you can just fill in your name and send a protest letter off to the government. Join us – it’s easy! This is their letter for today:
ATROCITY THREATENS TO BECOME OFFICIAL U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
The Senate amendment to the new Defense Appropriations Act would explicitly
prohibit the U.S. government from subjecting those in its custody to cruel,
inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment. It’s pretty straightforward
stuff. Yet despite a rousing 90-9 vote for its passage, there are still dark
forces at work trying to subvert the intent of this measure, the language of
which must survive the conference committee in the House of Representatives.If the morality perverters have their way, there will be a carve-out to exempt
the CIA from this prohibition. They are seeking this with the express knowledge
that sadists (acting under the color of CIA authority) have been responsible for
the horrific abuses which made necessary further action and clarification of
existing law. This exemption would in fact turn the measure on its head to
AUTHORIZE torture by a particular agency, diametrically contrary to the
amendment’s intent. They might as well appoint a “Torture Czar” and make it a
cabinet level position.Actually, for all practical purposes we already have a torture czar . . . it’s
the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. Yes, it is Cheney himself
who is PERSONALLY pressuring the conference committee to rescind the McCain
amendment in this way (just as he was pressuring CIA analysts in the cooking of
the justification for war with Iraq). It has been Cheney himself who has taken
a lead role from the beginning, talking in 2002 about the need to revive the
“dark arts.” Since they could no longer keep the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib and elsewhere classified, they have prosecuted a couple of selected
patsies for these crimes, while their agency handlers right up through the chain
of command have continued in their unconscionable ways.This is not to let the president himself off the hook. In the first place there
is Bush’s own overreaching lust for absolute dictatorial power. Indeed, his
longtime attorney and ally, Alberto Gonzales, put his name on the infamous Jan
25, 2002 memo, referring to the Geneva convention as “quaint.” But what many
people do not realize is that the heart of that reprehensible legal pretzel job
was drafted by David Addington, the staff attorney closely associated with Dick
Cheney. And would anybody like to guess Mr. Addington’s current title in the
White House? That’s right. He just replaced the indicted “Scooter” Libby as
Cheney’s Chief of Staff.There isn’t a “talking head” out there not drinking their own “talking points
Kool-Aid” who believes the Fitzgerald investigation is remotely close to being
finished. If anything, the allegations in the Libby indictment, which identify
Cheney as the one who specifically advised Libby that Valerie (Plame) Wilson
worked under the covert wing of the CIA, suggest that the Vice President is at
least one of the big game that the Special Counsel is still pursuing. The
tight-lipped Fifth Amendment-type reactions given by Cheney in the aftermath of
the indictment to explain his own role in the leak scandal do nothing to dispel
the intrigue. Instead the administration is circling the torture-advocate
wagons even tighter with the promotion of Addington, while the shadow of
Traitorgate continues to darken over their heads.Especially now, with the chickens of treason coming home to roost in the nest of
the chicken hawks themselves, this is the last time in history for the authors
of torture as official American policy to be allowed to push for largesse for
even wider atrocities. We must all immediately contact our senators and members
of the House of Representatives who might have influence on the conference
committee to demand that the overwhelmingly approved language of the McCain
amendment remain intact in the final Defense Appropriations Bill.ACTION FORM: McCain Amendment
We must also recognize that this is profoundly related to the selection of a
replacement for Harriet Miers as Supreme Court nominee. Remember — one of the
talking points of the neocons (before they turned on her for not being
sufficiently and demonstrably loyal to their causes) was that she would support
the president’s policies in the deceptively dubbed “war on terror.” But the
universal common denominator of all Bush appointees is their submissive
endorsement of the unlimited expansion of the president’s power to do whatever
he likes in defiance of Congress and even the people themselves.In his own confirmation hearing Roberts refused to say (among other things)
whether the Congress would have the power to stop a war if the president ignored
their authority. That case might come before him, he argued, as if he knew
something we didn’t. And it most certainly will if Bush is not stopped from
making any more such appointments. Roberts and his ilk will not legislate from
the bench (as if that were the boogie man to be feared). No, instead they will
UN-legislate from the bench, perhaps even to remove the McCain language from
American law by court order on the grounds that it would interfere with the
power of the president to play God. Remember also that in his first day on the
bench of the high court Roberts left the sheep’s clothing in his chambers to ask
aggressively why they should not overturn the TWICE-expressed will of the people
in the Oregon “Right to Die” case.For all of these reasons we must demand that the next nominee to the Supreme
Court be a true moderate and a true nonpartisan. One of the truly beautiful
things about Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is that the American people can
look at his work and agree that it will be based entirely on the facts and the
law. Even opposing attorneys of those he has indicted must concede that he is
unwavering in his fairness and his integrity, favoring neither side by any
inherent bias. We can demand no less from the next justice to be appointed to
the Supreme Court.ACTION FORM: Supreme Court
If we all speak out, we can remove the Vice President from his position as the
torture czar. It’s not as if he doesn’t have enough other black hats to wear;
he’s already serving in the capacity of treason czar as it is. Sheriff
Fitzgerald is working on that last one. The rest is up to we the people.
Please click on the links and participate in this cyber-protest march.