I could write on and on, and write lots and lots, on the topic of the kidnap and torture engaged in by this administration. But then I wouldn't get this up very quickly. So I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you this, everyone needs to be on the phone sooner rather than later, telling your Senatorys and members of the House of Representatives you are against legislation that:
1. takes away habeas corpus rights of the innocent people who have been rounded up by the military or CIA and shippped off to be tortured and imprisoned for years with no protections and no way to secure their release; and
2. allows for torture or violations of not only the Geneva Conventions, but the War Crimes Act, the torture conventions and allows the United States military, government, CIA or President to commit crimes against innocent people with no recourse.
IOW - you are against both the house and the senate "compromise" bills.
House of Representatives Contact info:
http://www.house.gov/...
Senators Contact info:
http://www.senate.gov/...
Or call toll free (thanks to the commentor)
Toll Free: 866.808.0065
Here's why the calls need to go out and they need to go out NOW!
Even in the "abstract" reference to torure - where people are assuming it is being used on the "guilty" - a clear majority of Americans are against it. What the President and members of Congress (including some Dems) are doing is allowing this to be phrased as a "just a little harsher with the bad guys" debate.
If no one calls bull loudly - by CONTACTING even the Senators and Members you KNOW won't change their votes, we go out with a whimper and with Congress thinking no one cares. Even our representatives who are willing to batter this country need to know that people ARE NOTICING and they are PISSED.
Last year, there was a lengthy NYU piece on torture
http://www.nytimes.com/...
by Joseph Lelyveld, titled "Interrogating Ourselves" where he noted large that Senators shyed from the torture issue because none of their constituents were saying anything about it.
However strong the outcry, it wasn't enough to yield political results in the form of a determined Congressional investigation, let alone an independent commission of inquiry; the Pentagon's own inquiries, which exonerated its civilian and political leadership, told us a good deal more than most Americans, so it would appear, felt they needed to know. Members of Congress say they receive a negligible number of letters and calls about the revelations that keep coming. ''You asked whether they want it clear or want it blurry,'' Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said to me about the reaction of her constituents to the torture allegations that alarm her. ''I think they want it blurry.''
Read that again - negligible number of calls and letters.
We need to change that. And not only to make the calls, but to let them know that we understand they are kidnapping and torturing wholly innocent people and are now wanting to take away any rights of those wholly innocent people to get access to a court (through habeas corpus) and get released.
If you actually have a discussion, or if you send and email and can link, direc them to this Haper's Magazine interview with Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh served in the CIA for 15 years and retired on June 30, 2006, as the Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, the intelligence community's premier group dedicated to the issue of political Islam.
http://www.harpers.org/...
I spent hours talking with prisoners about why they had become jihadists and how they came to Guantanamo.
Some of the detainees participated in jihad in Afghanistan, mostly against the Northern Alliance; others did not but were caught in the dragnet--having been at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Even the command down there knew that probably one-third of the prisoners were neither terrorists nor jihadists, and wouldn't have been there if we weren't paying a bounty to Pakistani security forces for every Middle Eastern-looking person they handed over to us. Almost every detainee I spoke to claimed that we paid $5,000 per person. Unfortunately, we treated everyone the same, which led the non-jihadists at Guantanamo to hate us as much as the rest, becoming more hardened in their attitudes toward the US and more disappointed in the American sense of fairness and justice.
That's right - he was saying at least a third. From the Seeton Hall studies we know it is probably much higher than that. So America has gone into a foreign country, paid money for an innocent person, taken them to be abused at Guantanamo, and said they have no rights that a "person" would have to be released and this is different from violating the 13th Amendment HOW, exactly?
Amendment XIII
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Ask if there has been any Congressional investigation of the Chinese Uighars. US Courts(before Congress started taking habeas away) determined that they were wholly innocent and had never been enemy combatants and also that this was KNOWN TO THE MILITARY/ADMINISTRATION WHILE IT HELD THEM. Only when the case was about to make it to the Supreme Court were they released (and then they suddenly said gosh, they would have done it much sooner if there was anyone to take them - completely ignoring the fact that they held them for years, as innocent civilians, but kept secret from their families and without a lawyer and treated in the same illegal manner as the "enemy combatants" and the President want the right to KEEP ON DOING THIS OVER AND OVER!!!!! Why hasn't the do-nothing Congress investigated? And why do they want to take away access to the courts for these people we have kidnapped, enslaved after paying for them, then abused for years?
We also know the CIA detention program is kidnapping and torturing innocent people. Again, with no rights to courts and no protections on the extent of torture. So again, if you have a discussion, ask why there has been no investigation of either the Arar or el-Masri case or to find out how many there are and ask whether or not Congress has an investigation scheduled to review with the CIA Inspector General the several DOZEN wrongful renditions he might know about?
Seriously guys - this is bad news for so many reasons. No one is mentioning the fact that a part of the Canadian investigation is that the Judge there ruled that they will have to restrict information that they share with the US because the US is now an acknowledge state sponsor of torture of innocents, without access to courts. So now we are going to get LESS of the information we need to be safe - from a border neighbor - because Congress is inept and immoral.
Don't let this opportunity to send the message go by - even if your members won't change, enough calls and they will not be able to say "our constituents didn't complain"