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Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s torture accountability letter writing campaign. The basic premise of this series is that every Monday the Dog will write a letter to decision makers on urging action on accountability for the State Sponsored Torture program of the Bush Administration and provide the links so you the reader can cut and paste the letter or use it as the jumping off point for your own. The important thing is to keep the heat on the people who can move this issue forward by keeping their in boxes full. This week we will be writing the President with carbon copies to the AG, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate and Chairs of the Judiciary Committees.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
Dear Mr. President;
I write today on the issue of rule of law and accountability for the apparent Bush administration State Sponsored Torture program. Bluntly, Mr. President, you have been put in a box. We have a prisoner who is widely known to be a major planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This is a man who has also been waterboarded by the United States 183 times in one month. Even by highly dubious legal standards of the Office of Legal Council Memos this must be considered torture by any reasonable standard.
This means we will not be able to try Mr. Mohammed for his crimes. Any confession he has made and any evidence gained from it will be considered fruit of the poisoned tree. The very fact of our torture of him and its public knowledge will also always taint all other classified evidence against Mr. Mohammed. This will make the very act of trying him for his crimes a near impossibility.
However holding him will also be unacceptable as well. The United State Constitution and case law is quite clear. No one can be held by the United States indefinitely with out charge and without out trial. The efforts of the Bush Administration to use the Law of War to do so were not accepted by the Supreme Court and no new arguments how ever inventive are going to be any more persuasive. We are talking about one of the fundamental building blocks of our Republic and no Court is going to undercut that for any reason.
This leaves you in a very poor place politically, Mr. President, you can not hold an enemy of our nation, but if you let him go it will be a major talking point for your political opposition. They will use the fear it will create to strike at you on a daily basis. This is not your fault Mr. President, it is the fault of the previous administration, and that is the way out, the only way out of the box they have placed you in.
Mr. President, you must lay this out to the people, the fact our nation of laws requires the release of prisoners like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, because we tortured them, because we broke our own laws and thus can not try them for the heinous crimes they committed against us. Then you must turn around and use the full force of the law to punish those who put us in such a dangerous place. This is what the law is intended to do, protect the citizens of the nation from the actions of other citizens who do not regard the law as the limit we all agree to for the greater good. By insisting the law be followed now, you send the message we are a nation of law, and will not tolerate this kind of thing in the future and expose the reasons we must adhere to our core principals as a nation, especially in times of crisis lest they make us less safe and secure in the future.
Mr. President, you will come to a place where you have to release these men sooner or later. If you wait and are forced to do so by the Courts you will lose the faith of many who supported you as a choice for the rule of law, and still have the political consequences from those on the right who caused this situation. If you act now you will be able to say, at the very least, that you stood tall for the rule of law and kept faith with your oath of office, which is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.
Sincerely,
CC:
Attorney General Eric Holder
Speaker of the House Pelosi
Majority Leader Reid
Judiciary Chairman Conyers
Judiciary Chairman Leahy
So, there is the letter, below are the links:
The White House, Attention President Obama
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Majority Leader Harry Reid
Department of Justice, attention AG Holder – AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Rep John Conyers – Judiciary Committee Chair
Chairman Leahy
Now it is up to you, Citizens. The Dog knows there are lots of things to think about and write about today, but can the hound impose on you for just a few minutes of your time? Action on torture is important.
The floor is yours.
4 Comments
It is a problem of ideals. If we believe, as I do, in the rule of law, then we must not hold men with out charge forever. It is more important that we hold to the ideals of our nation than we hold on to these men. But that is true only if we will follow the rule of law with torture accountability as well.
I’d say its a matter of morality rather than ideals. Morality is practical, rather than ideal. It puts ideals into action, makes them work for their living.
Our current leadership seems to think that morals are something good in theory, reserved for daydreams, undergraduate seminars, and choir practice. In the “real world”, you wrap your morals up in a clean cloth, put them safely up on a high shelf, and get down and dirty on the dark side. Out of necessity.
But morals aren’t about necessity. They are about free choice and the will to do good or evil. Morals aren’t for idle speculaion in safe surroundings. They are for battlefields and cells and triage centers and famines and sinking ships. Ideals are what you have in a nice chat over coffee. Morals are what you do when you have to choose between your own life and a defenseless child’s.
(I messed up my last paragraph somehow–here it is)
Our laws are about freedom and thus, in this sense, about moral choice. If you choose to violate them, you are no longer free. You are a slave to your own fears and the other guy’s demagoguery.
Thanks Dog