27 Democratic Congressmen have sent a letter to new Defense Secretary Robert Gates regarding the Pentagon’s use of contractors at places like Guantanamo who torture prisoners. The letter was triggered by an FBI finding documenting new instances of torture at Guantanamo.
The letter begins by stating that there is a lack of proper oversight of military contractors which results in wasted funds and missions. It also creates a lack of accountability; elsewhere, it has resulted in the overcharging of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The FBI reports in question were based on eyewitness accounts of contractors directing military personnel to torture prisoners to obtain information even though evidence obtained by torture is not reliable because people will tell their captors what they want to hear in order to escape torture. Not only that, this is similar to other instances such as Abu Girhab, where contractors were used to torture people.
The letter then goes on to ask Mr. Gates the following questions:
-Why does the DOD use contractors for interrogation?
-Do they have the resources they need to perform interrogation without the use of contractors? If not, why not?
-What measures are in place to ensure DOD control over interrogators?
-What laws are the contractors subject to?
-Under what authority do the contractors have to order active military personnel?
-What rules are in place to ensure that contractors do not disclose classified information?
-In what other places beyond Abu Girhab and Guantanamo has the DOD used contractors for interrogation?
-How many contractors are there, what companies are used, and what percentage of interrogators are contractors?
-What type of training do contractors receive?
-What actions does the DOD take if they abuse their duties as interrogators?
-How can the DOD insure that there will be no future abuses by contractors?
The following Congressmen have signed the letter:
Jan Schakowsky
David Price
George Miller
Barney Frank
James McGovern
Betty McCollum
Keith Ellison
Pete Stark
Edward Markey
Tammy Baldwin
Luis Gutierrez
Danny Davis
Steve Rothman
Jerrold Nadler
Steve Cohen
Robert Brady
Darlene Hooley
Zoe Lofgren
Elijah Cummings
Raul Grijalva
Lynn Woolsey
Dennis Kucinich
Carolyn Maloney
Bill Pascrell
Maurice Hinchey
Gwen Moore
Lloyd Doggett
This is typical MO for the Bush administration – hire contractors to do the dirty work, so that when Bush is confronted with allegations of torture, he can say that we do not torture. Of course not – Bush passes the buck so that he can escape responsibility. But don’t expect too much from Gates. He is a veteran of Iran-Contra and is a veteran of making shallow excuses for the conduct of his department.
This disgraceful spending of taxpayer money to torture people is simply an irresponsible attempt by the Bush administration to feed their sense of entitlement. The whole structure of the Rovian machine is about power – grabbing and maintaining power. We see this with their bizzare unitary executive theory; we see this with their radical attempts to control people’s bodies; and we see this in their sick and pathetic attempts to cover up their own insecurity by torturing other people.
All this has created an urgent crisis, as other people and countries are no longer looking up to us as an example of peace and freedom. We win the war on terror by the same way we won the Cold War – by winning the hearts and minds of people. And when people see for themselves that we are torturing people thanks to our twisted sense of entitlement that we can do whatever we want, they will no longer see us as the example of liberty that they did in the weeks after 9/11. Instead of that, they are now starting to see us as a country which abuses its power and which is completely insensitive to the urgent concerns of the rest of the world.
In order to change this, we need to have people like these 29 Congressmen who have the moral courage to stand up to the President and firmly tell him no. Whenever the President gets the destructive urge to cut our social programs, destroy our jobs, undermine our families through abolishing the Minimum Wage, advocate the appeasement of Bin Laden, or radically reinterpret the law and the Constitution, we need more and more people to do the same thing – politely, but firmly tell him no.
And it is telling that all of these Congressmen are Democrats. Not one single Republican has publicly spoken out against torture or Halliburton since McCain’s sham torture bill was passed in Congress and Bush issued a signing statement saying that he didn’t have to obey the law. And even though they lost the election, we see more of the same tired old politics as usual from the Republicans – follow George Bush right or wrong.
Instead of sharing in an opportunity to restore the rule of law, the Republicans irrationally cling to the decaying Bush Presidency. Instead of working to reform our government so that it is accountable to all three branches and the people, we see permissive indifference and excuses from the Republicans. Instead of vision, we see the Republicans defending a status quo that is collapsing into irrelevance. Instead of having a debate over the issues and doing the hard work to hold Bush accountable, we see Republicans in a warm spiderhole of denial. For them, it is as if they had never left power.
And don’t ask Dr. Dobson or any of the fundies to come and talk about moral values. We never see them talk about moral values when it comes to Republican failings. The only time we see them in action is over supposed moral failings of the left. Instead of working together with us in a bipartisan manner to end the torture scandal, they say absolutely nothing about this pathetic disgrace. They are no longer a moral voice reflecting the sense of national conscience. Instead, what we see from them is a selfish attempt to grab as much power as possible, including the power to control people’s minds and bodies. We see them endangering the lives of women through overturning Roe instead of working to save lives by showing a voice of moral outrage against the taking of lives and souls through torture. This is the sad situation of America today – Bush thinking that he can do whatever he wants while too many people are hearing only what they want to hear and people who are supposed to be moral leaders telling them only what they want them to hear.