Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s on-going campaign for torture accountability. The purpose of this series is to keep the issue of accountability under the law for torture alive. To do this every Monday the Dog writes a letter to one of the decision to makers who could move the issue of torture accountability forward. You get involved by sending your own letter, you can use the one the Dog writes, just pasted over your signature, or you can write your own. The point is to have some notice given that not everyone has forgotten about the issue of torture war crimes in the glare of HCR and the new season of American Idol.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
This week we are going to write to the Attorney General, as he is the single person that can really get the ball rolling with full-scale investigations. There will be copies to the President, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, Judiciary Chairs Leahy and Conyers and ranking Judiciary Committee Member Rep. Jerry Nadler.
This week’s letter:
Dear Attorney General Holder;
I write you this week to ask a simple question; doesn’t it make you angry that you are being made a patsy by war criminals?
I know that is rather blunt, but I have to assume it is what you feel in your heart. The man you were when you went to law school, the man who decided to spend his life in service of the law must be howling with rage at the box in which you now find yourself.
Make no mistake, you have been put in a box. It is crystal clear from the testimony, under oath, of former Bush Administration officials that there was a conspiracy to circumvent the laws on torture and find a justification to use waterboarding on prisoners of the United States. The conspiracy was completed when Abu Zabaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohamed were waterbaorded 83 times and 183 times respectively.
The idea that since some of these waterboardings were less than 10 seconds somehow makes them not torture is specious on its face. Yet this is what you are being forced to defend by not investigating the entire chain of events that led to this torture.
The political pressure to let these known crimes fade into history has been enormous. I have no doubt that you have been taken aside by more than one elected official or their staff and earnestly informed what the cost of following the rule of law would be. It is clear there would be an uproar from the political Right over any full investigation that very possibly could result in Democratic losses in 2010 and beyond. It might very well prevent action on other agenda items of great importance to the American people.
So, there is your box, Attorney General Holder, you can do the right thing and set off a fire storm with unknowable consequences or you can become the third in a line of Attorney Generals who have looked the other way as war crimes of a most heinous nature are committed and admitted to.
As a man of good conscience, this must gnaw at you on a daily basis. However, you do not have to live with this. If you are being tormented by this box, it is because you are not doing what you know is the right thing for an Attorney General to do. Your office, perhaps more than any other, should owe its allegiance to the Constitution and the law alone. You are the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. The responsibility for letting known and admitted war criminals walk the street, and argue to justify and codify their crimes, stops with you.
It is time to do the right thing. It is time to break out of the box you have been put in and let the consequences fall where they may. By appointing a Special Prosecutor to fully investigate the DoJ, the Bush Administration, the CIA and the DoD in the matter of detainee capture, holding and abuse, you will go a long way to getting out of the box. You will also help to assure no other Attorney General is place in a similar box in the future.
The investigation, and where appropriate, the punishment of those who conspired to torture and those who actually tortured prisoners is a requirement under international law. It is also a requirement if the United States is ever to regain its place as an example to the world. The choice rests with you.
You know what the right thing to do is, AG Holder, it is up to you to do it.
Regards,
There is the letter. The Dog is not sure that AG Holder is angry about the situation he is in, but hopefully if he reads this letter he will be. Below are the links you will need to send your letters.
AG Holder, can be reached at AskDOJ@usdoj.gov. Be sure to put Attention then his name in the subject line.
The White House, Attention President Obama
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Majority Leader Harry Reid
Rep John Conyers - Judiciary Committee Chair
Chairman Leahy
Representative Jerry Nadler
(to get past Rep. Nadler's filter use Zip Code 11224-4561 and the address of 445 Neptune Ave, Brooklyn, NY)
Now it is your turn. Please don’t let today go by without taking action for accountability.
The floor is yours.