TORTURE THE GOOD OL AMERICAN WAY

USA

USA

USA

I AM ASHAMED OF OUR COUNTRY AND THE WAY WE ARE VIOLATING THE GENIVA COVENTION BY TORTURING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE. THE HOMELAND SECURITY-PENTAGONE PRISON SYSTEM IS EXTREMELY IN THE WRONG! AND IS IN A DIRECT VIOLATION OF OUR VERY OWN CONSTITUTION that we ALL signed. WE ARE BEING TOLD LIES BY OUR WHITE HOUSES OFFICIALS, CONCERNING THE USA STANCE AND ENDORSEMENT OF TORTURE, WAR AND IMPRISONMENT.
WE ARE BEING SOLD STORIES AND COVER UPs BY THE MEDIAs. WHAT IS CONSIDERD TREASON BY ‘ALL COUNTS’, OUR LEADERS ARE ENGAGING IN AND THEY ARE CIRCUMVENTING THE INTENTIONS OF THE LAWS OF OUR COUNTRY AND THE WORLD. ONES WE HAVE FOUGHT HARD AND CHERISHED TO HAVE AND ENJOY! *BELOW* YOU WILL FIND MANY LINKS AND SHORT NEWS ITEMS AND PROOF THAT OUR LEADERS ARE GUILTY OF ENDORSING THIS TYPE OF CONDUCT. THAT SUPERIOR TOP OFFICIALS APPROVED THIS TYPE OF TORTURE, AND OVERLOOKED REPORTS, AND FAILED TO REPREHEND PROPPERLY AND HOW THERE WAS NO OVERSITE OR CONTROL AS TO ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.
THERE WERE REPORTS HOW THE RED CROSS AND MANY PEOPLE OR AGENCEIES WERE COMPLAINING OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE, FBI REPORTS, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH,UNICF,CIA REPORTS AND NAVY REPORT AND ARMY REPORTS ALL SHOW AS YOU SEE FROM MY LINKS *NEAR THE BOTTOM THAT IT WAS ON-GOING ALL ALONG ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. THE PICTURES WE ALL FIRST SEEN IN NATIONAL NEWS SEEN WERE THE FIRST THUS AND THEN AND ONLY BECAUSE OF THE PICTURE LEAK, THE INFOMATION OF TORTURE CRIMES HAPPENING STARTED TO SLOWLY LEAK OUT WELL NOW THE COVER-UPS ARE SEEN AND BY ALL THE SUPEOPHNAING OF RECORDS HAS THUS CAUSED THE TRUTH TO BE SOMEWHAT CLEARER AND EXPOSED
IF ONLY THE GENERAL MAINSTREAM PUBLIC COULD SEE
THE FACTS THAT ABUSE WAS ALLOWED AND IS WRONG
IN MANY CASES THE CRIMES WERE COVERED UP AND IN SOME CASE MUREDER HAS THUS RESULTED THE NEGLECT FROM THOSE IN CHARGE AND THE TYPE AND HOW THE ABUSES TOOK PLACE IS TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR AND OUT-OF-LINE AND UNACCEPTABLE BY MY MORALS AND STANDARDS AND WE NEED TO HOLD THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS ACCOUNTABLE

THE TRUTH IS THIS VERY MINUTE THE MILITARY AND PRISON PENTAGONE WAR MACHINE CONTINUES TO SKIRT THE LAWS AND WHAT THEY ARE TELLING US WHILE THEY DO SOMETHING OTHER, AND HOW THEY KNOWINGLY, ENFORCINGLY, AND ENCOURAGING TORTURE AND ENCOURAGE INHUMANE PAIN AND SUFFERING USING UNCONSTITUTIONAL IMPRISONMENT TACTICS AND PROCEDURES TO EXTRACT INFORMATION. AND IN SOME CASE HOLDING FOR LIFE SENTENCES WITH NO LAWYER OR RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE OR LIBERTY, GENEVIA CONVENTION OR INTERNATION LAW.

MANY OF THESE DOCUMENTS WERE ONLY OBTAINED BY THE ACLU HAVING TO SUE AND I SAY “ONLY OBTAINED BY THE ACLU HAVING TO SUE”
FOR EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE THE ACLU HAD TO FIGHT VERY HARD TO GET. AND FIGHTING DAY AFTER DAY AND MONTH UP TO NOW WHICH HAS TURNED INTO YEARS,WITH SPENDING LOTS OF DOLLARS THAT GOT THEM INTO LAWSUITS ALL TO AND 'FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE' TO LET THEM KNOW BY DEMAND THE INFORMATION OF TRUTH.THE INFORMATION ON KNOWLEDGE OF TORTURE.WHICH WILL HELP SHOW WHO ORDERED OR WHO OVERLOOKED OR DID WHAT TO ALLOW THIS TO GET SO OUT OF HAND.AND IF AND BECAUSE TORTURE WAS DONE WHO UP THE LADDER OF COMMAND SAID THIS IS OK TO DO.

MY POINT IS THE GOVERNMENT FOUGHT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY IN TRYING TO WITHHOLD THE INFORMATION AND SUPRESS IT. EVERY STEP OF THE WAY ISNT THAT ODD? AND THEY ARE STILL FIGHTING INFO RIGHT NOW TODAY! SAYING TO US THE PUBLIC CONSERNING TORTURE AND IMPRISONMENT AND MURDER “SO SUE ME IF YOU WANT TO SEE ANY INFORMATION” AND THAT IS WHAT THE ACLU IS DOING

WITH THEIR EVIL NEOCON WAY IT IS A SHAME FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN OUR COUNTRY. FOR OUR HONOR AND OUR INTERGERITY AND THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY AND PEOPLE WE ALL HERE IN THE USA REALLY ARE. THIS TORTURE-THESE ATROCITIES BRING TEARS TO MY EYES. GOD HELP THIS COUNTRY THAT WAGES SO MUCH PAIN ON THE REST OF THE WORLD.GOD BLESS THOSE THAT SUFFERED DUE TO THIS I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

PLEASE PEOPLE, READ THESE FACTS AND TELL ME

"IS THIS YOUR COUNTRY?
IS THIS THE USA YOU BELONG TO?"
BUT SPEAKING FOR ME..,

MY SELF, “I AM FUCKING ASHAMED!”

GHOST PLANE OF TORTURE

Gulfstream V = CIA
Old RummmmY getting Sued by ACLU
Fact Sheet: Legal Claims on Rummmmy
Cynthia Mckinney Shakes Rumsfeld and Myers Over 9/11 Wargames
Murder & Torture

**Iraq People Tortured While in Custody**
Very Young boys Detained in Abu Ghraib
It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.

Rumsfeld asked why detainees could be forced to stand up for only four hours, noting that he was routinely on his feet eight to 10 hours a day

The Political Background of the Torture Memos



A Change of Heart
By Michael Dorf, FindLaw.com. Posted January 5, 2005

As 2004 drew to a close, the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice took an important step towards restoring its own integrity: It released a memorandum essentially repudiating its earlier analysis of the circumstances under which someone could be found criminally liable for engaging in torture. That earlier memorandum of August 2002 had turned intellectual somersaults to find loopholes and excuses for the commission of what a lay observer would surely consider torture.
The new memo, in contrast, is fair-minded and reasonable. Accordingly, its author, acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, deserves considerable praise. As I explain below, the memo definitively repudiates two of the most outrageous positions set forth in the August 2002 memo: the almost impossibly high threshold for finding an act of torture; and the contention that a torturer can escape criminal liability if he engages in torture with a noble goal in mind, such as to extract vital information from the torture victim.
In one particular, however, the new memo could have gone further. The August 2002 memo had set forth a third outrageous proposition: that Congress lacks the power to prohibit torture undertaken at the behest of the president, acting in his capacity as commander in chief. Although the new memo laudably declines to endorse this view, it does not formally repudiate the position either.
That is unfortunate, because the August 2002 memo's contentions regarding the wartime powers of the president are truly frightening. They deserve to be repudiated expressly and unequivocally.
The Political Background of the Torture Memos
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) provides legal advice to the Executive Branch of the federal government on important matters of public policy. Its August 2002 memo was signed by Jay Bybee, then the head of OLC and now a federal appeals court judge. Judge Bybee, who was confirmed by the Senate before the memo came to light, has refused to comment on it.
Much of the political heat produced by the Bybee memo has accordingly been directed elsewhere – at the Bush Administration in general and at White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, to whom the memo is addressed, in particular. Gonzales will shortly face his own Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination to become attorney general. When he does, he will likely be asked why he sought legal advice about the "standards of conduct" under the international treaty and the federal statute barring torture.
The August 2002 memo recites OLC's understanding that the torture issue arose "in the context of the conduct of interrogations outside of the United States." One can reasonably infer, therefore, that the Bush administration, with the approval of Gonzales, was interested in pushing the envelope in its treatment of suspected al Qaeda terrorists and others detained in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
That inference receives further support from reports of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. Together, the evidence suggests that U.S. military and civilian interrogators were given the green light to engage in practices that the International Committee of the Red Cross has described as "tantamount to torture."
The Senate is thus entitled to inquire whether Gonzales knew or should have known that his request for legal advice regarding potential criminal liability for torture was part of a scheme to authorize – or at least turn a blind eye towards – torture.
In the wake of last week's release of the new memo, some commentators have suggested that the administration is hoping to defuse the potentially explosive issue of the role Gonzales played with respect to the August 2002 memo. If that is the administration's hope, however, it seems a vain one; the fact that OLC has now repudiated the views it expressed earlier sheds little light on Gonzales' fitness to serve as the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
If one were to conclude that Gonzales showed poor judgment and disrespect for the rule of law by asking for the August 2002 memo, then it is hard to see how OLC's more recent change of heart would alter this conclusion. A confession of error by Gonzales himself might be relevant, but why should an about-face by OLC be relevant?
The Legal Significance of the OLC Memos
These political considerations will be addressed when Gonzales goes before the Senate. For now, let us focus on the law. What is the legal significance of the August 2002 memo and the December 2004 memo repudiating it?
OLC memos do not have the force of law in quite the way that opinions of the Supreme Court do, but neither are they mere opinion pieces in the way that, say, a scholarly article or a law professor's column on FindLaw's Writ is. OLC is often asked to address constitutional issues that will never to make it to court – what lawyers call non-justiciable political questions. In these circumstances, the formal advice of OLC may be the only sort of "precedent" that exists.
Moreover, although the head of OLC and the top deputies are political appointees, the office as a whole has long had a culture of independence. The dedicated and talented lawyers who work at OLC typically see themselves not as mere servants of the Administration that happens to seek their advice, but also as keepers of an inter-generational trust. Thus, one commonly sees OLC memos taking seriously the views expressed in prior OLC memos prepared for Presidents of either political party. The OLC under Republican administrations approvingly cites the memos of its predecessors in Democratic administrations, and vice-versa.
Against this background, the August 2002 memo can only be described as a serious departure from longstanding OLC practice. In content and tone, the memo reads much like a document that an overzealous young associate in a law firm would prepare in response to a partner's request for whatever arguments can be concocted to enable the firm's client to avoid criminal liability.
The December 2004 memo, however, is markedly different. Although its analysis is no less lawyerly than that contained in the August 2002 memo, it shows a sensitivity to the important role that OLC plays in shaping national policy – a sensitivity that was sorely lacking in the earlier memo.
How Severe is the Pain or Suffering that Torture Must Cause?
As its title suggests, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Acts, prohibits not only torture but also less serious forms of cruelty, inhumanity and degradation. The United States ratified the Convention and subsequently enacted federal legislation that defines torture and establishes criminal liability for Americans and others found in the United States who commit torture abroad.
Significantly, however, the federal statute does not impose criminal liability for cruel, inhuman, or degrading acts. Under a reservation adopted by the Senate when it ratified the U.N. Convention, such lesser acts are equated with treatment that would be considered unconstitutional under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
The August 2002 memo seizes on the distinction between, on the one hand, torture, as defined in both the U.N. Convention and the U.S. implementing legislation as the infliction of "severe pain or suffering," and, on the other hand, "mere" cruel, inhuman or degrading acts. The basic strategy of the August 2002 memo on this point is to treat all but the most horrific acts as insufficiently severe to constitute torture. Thus, the August 2002 memo sets the torture threshold at "excruciating and agonizing" pain. or pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
Although the December 2004 memo recognizes that the plain text of the Convention and federal law do distinguish between torture and lesser degradations, it disavows the extremely high threshold advocated in the August 2002 memo.
To be sure, the new memo is not especially helpful in establishing exactly how much pain or suffering is necessary to count as "severe." For the most part, the memo simply describes cases in which the courts have and have not found torture to have occurred.
But this is probably the prudent course. Cruel, inhuman and degrading forms of treatment are, after all, no more lawful than torture, even if they do not give rise to criminal liability in the U.S. courts. To draw sharp distinctions between torture and these "lesser" horrors, as the August 2002 memo attempted to do, could only serve to signal to potential torturers how they can avoid imprisonment while still inflicting great pain and suffering. OLC apparently now realizes that it is inappropriate to send such signals.
When, if Ever, is Torture Justified?
Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the August 2002 memo was its argument that a defendant could escape criminal liability for committing torture by presenting a defense of necessity or self-defense.
Under either defense, the torturer could argue that he tortured his victim in order to prevent some terrible harm. To use the classic example, one could claim that he had in custody a suspect believed to have planted a time bomb that, if not defused, would kill many innocents. If the defendant reasonably believed that by torturing the suspect, he would learn the location of the bomb and thus save the innocents, the argument goes, he cannot be punished for having done so.
The notion that torture is sometimes morally justified has real appeal. If one stipulates sufficiently great certainty of a catastrophe, all but the most punctilious Kantians will be tempted to say that it is better to torture the terrorist than to allow the catastrophe to occur.
The difficulty, though, is that the real world provides probabilities rather than certainties. Categorical prohibitions against torture like the one contained in the U.N. Convention and federal law are based on the sensible assumption that if torture is condoned in the extreme case of the known terrorist who has certainly planted the ticking time bomb, security officers will come to believe that they hear bombs ticking everywhere, and will use torture against people merely suspected of posing a security threat.
Only by prohibiting torture under all circumstances, such laws assume, can we prevent an extremely limited authorization, for torture in extreme circumstances, from becoming a license for routine torture.
It is possible that this logic is wrong. Perhaps, as Alan Dershowitz and others have argued recently, careful regulation can prevent us from slipping down the slope from rare to common torture.
But if so, that is an argument for a dramatic change in the law, rather than an argument for reading nonexistent exceptions into the existing international and U.S. categorical bans on torture. The August 2002 memo, in proposing such exceptions, would have gutted the laws it purported to interpret.
Accordingly, the December 2004 memo states unequivocally that "there is no exception under the statute permitting torture to be used for a 'good reason.'"
Can Congress Limit the President's Ability to Order Torture?
The principal disappointment in the December 2004 memo is its failure to condemn the view of Presidential power expressed in the August 2002 memo. That earlier memo asserted that "the President enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his commander in chief authority and in conducting operations against hostile forces." It argued that Congress lacks the constitutional power to limit the President's decisions about how to treat captives.
The August 2002 memo had attempted to justify these sweeping propositions largely by presenting selective, out-of-context citations of broad language in a few Supreme Court opinions, and citing OLC's own recent post-9/11 memos.
The December 2004 memo should have unequivocally repudiated the unlimited view of presidential power espoused in August 2002. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution commits to Congress the authority "to make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." From this language, Congress' authority to limit the President's treatment of captives is clear.
If the August 2002 memo's view of Presidential power were accepted, the president could unilaterally order discipline of U.S. service members even if that discipline clearly contradicted the Uniform Code of Military Justice, enacted by Congress. He could even order that all enemy captives be shot, notwithstanding clear treaty obligations to the contrary. These extreme examples show the absurdity of any claim that the president has an entirely free hand in the treatment of captives or the conduct of war more generally.
The December 2004 memo, by its terms, "supersedes the August 2002 Memorandum in its entirety." For that reason, the August 2002 assertion of the president's virtually unlimited power as commander in chief can no longer be said to constitute official OLC policy.
However, the December 2004 memo does not specifically disavow the August 2002 view of presidential authority. Deeming analysis of such power "unnecessary," the December 2004 memo simply declines to address the subject.
Why did the memo's author feel it was unnecessary to address this key point? The memo itself claims that "[c]onsideration of the bounds of any" presidential authority to authorize torture in violation of Acts of Congress "would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture."
But this explanation for the new memo's reticence as to the scope of presidential authority does not quite wash, for none of the OLC analysis is, strictly speaking, necessary; if the new memo had been limited to necessary analysis, there would have been no memo at all.
Given that U.S. personnel are not supposed to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, there is no necessity to clarify the line between the two categories of forbidden conduct; yet the December 2004 memo does just that. Similarly, with respect to the question of whether there is a good-reason exception to the torture prohibition, and a number of other issues, the December 2004 memo does not simply wash away the conclusions of the August 2002 memo; it affirmatively draws contrary conclusions.
Accordingly, one is left to worry that OLC declined to assert limits on presidential authority because OLC may continue to entertain a dangerously broad view of that authority.
Nonetheless, putting aside the legitimate worry about what the December 2004 memo does not say about presidential power, the memo is, on the whole, a most welcome development. Whatever the actual motives of the Justice Department officials who released it when they did, the memo itself should have the salutary effect of communicating to personnel overseas that the U.S. neither encourages nor tolerates torture.
Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University in New York City. His book, Constitutional Law Stories, is published by Foundation Press, and tells the stories behind fifteen leading constitutional cases.
Torture is not wrong because someone else thinks it is wrong or because others, in retaliation for torture by Americans, may in turn torture Americans. The torture itself is wrong. Torture is wrong because it inflicts unspeakable pain upon the body of a fellow human being who is entirely at our mercy. The tortured person is bound and helpless. The torturer stands over him with his instruments. There is no question of "unilateral disarmament," because the victim bears no arms, lacking even the use of the two arms he was born with. The inequality is total. To abuse or kill a person in such a circumstance is as radical a denial of common humanity as is possible. It is repugnant to learn that one's country's military forces are engaging in torture. It is worse to learn that the torture is widespread. It is worse still to learn that the torture was rationalized and sanctioned in long memorandums written by people at the highest level of the government. But worst of all would be ratification of this record by a vote to confirm one of its chief authors to the highest legal office in the executive branch of the government, Alberto Gonzales

The war in Iraq has given birth to an issue that may one day be seen as more important than the war, the question of torture. Just as H.J. Res. 114, by which Congress authorized the war, was the key vote for that conflict, so now the vote whether to confirm White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General will very likely be the key vote in regard to torture. At the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination, the senators seemed almost as interested in flattering one another as in examining the nominee. The former committee chair, Senator Orrin Hatch, did not thrust a lighted cigarette into the ear of Senator Patrick Leahy. Senator Joseph Biden did not "waterboard" Senator John Cornyn -- that is, he did not strap Senator Cornyn to a board and thrust his head under water, holding him there until he believed he was being drowned. Senator Arlen Specter did not force Senator Russ Feingold to eat his lunch from a toilet. Senator Biden did not strip Senator Mike DeWine naked, attach a leash to his neck and force him to crawl around the hearing-room floor. Senator Specter did not kill Senator Edward Kennedy and then pose for a photograph next to his corpse, making a thumbs-up sign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/opinion/04bloche.html?oref=login

Triage at Abu Ghraib
By M. GREGG BLOCHE and JONATHAN H. MARKS

Published: February 4, 2005

YOU probably remember the photograph. A tiny female M.P. in baggy fatigues stands over a nude Iraqi man, holding him on a leash. He lies limp, on his side, utterly humiliated, an icon of wartime excess.

The conduct depicted in that photo is difficult to justify under any circumstances. But as it turns out, a few weeks before the photo was taken, use of a leash was approved on medical grounds, according to the Army doctor who commanded the medical unit that cared for Abu Ghraib's prisoners and the American soldiers who guarded them.

It is easy to criticize Major Auch for allowing M.P.'s to use a leash, but it is difficult to say what he should have done instead. He had antipsychotic drugs on hand but no psychiatrists to prescribe them, and he lacked the experience to give these powerful drugs himself.

So the leashed detainee went untreated, as did hundreds of others with mental disorders. The lone psychologist who accompanied Major Auch, First Lt. Joseph Wehrman, was troubled by what he found on their weekly visits. Up to 5 percent of the detainee population (which averaged 2,000 in late 2003 and early 2004) was mentally ill, Lieutenant Wehrman told us, but to his knowledge, none of the prisoners received medication.

The atmosphere at Abu Ghraib hardly promoted sanity. Mortar shells landed almost daily, according to military personnel we interviewed, and prisoners often rioted, sometimes using smuggled weapons, with deadly effect. In late 2003, Major Auch's unit set up a field hospital, bringing a full-time medical presence to the prison for the first time. For the dozen or so clinicians assigned to the hospital, the daily routine was surreal.

At times the hospital lacked basic supplies, according to members of the clinical staff, and at times it maintained a surgical service without surgeons. Sometimes the hospital ran out of chest tubes, intravenous fluids or medicines. Medical staff members improvised, taking tubes from patients when they died and reusing them, without sterilization.

Physician's assistants and general practitioners amputated limbs, a dentist did heart surgery, and Major Auch begged and bartered with other medical units for drugs and intravenous fluids. When they ran out of blood sugar test strips for Abu Ghraib's many diabetics, according to a medic assigned to the unit, they gave insulin by guessing the dose and watching for bad reactions.

Amid murderous shortages, there were paradoxes of plenty. Major Auch's men received sophisticated equipment like digital X-ray machines, several said, but they weren't taught how to use it. And in fact, a psychiatrist was assigned to Abu Ghraib for a few months. But he treated no patients; that wasn't his job. He was supposed to help military intelligence make interrogation plans.

Through their nerve and initiative under fire, Abu Ghraib's clinicians saved lives. To try to do so, they broke rules: dentists aren't supposed to operate on hearts, and physician's assistants don't take off arms or legs.

Nor do doctors manage mental patients by putting them on leashes. We don't condone this practice, and there can be no excuse for the torture and other abuse that many detainees endured at Abu Ghraib. But we are not inclined to blame Major Auch. The men and women who risked their lives to care for Iraqis and Americans alike were put in impossible circumstances by indifference or worse from above.

Pentagon spokesmen say the Army did its best, under trying circumstances, to provide medical care to both troops and detainees. On the battlefield, military medicine performed superbly, keeping ratios of killed to wounded G.I.'s to historic lows. But at Abu Ghraib, the Army all but abdicated its responsibility to provide care to the thousands of people it kept in custody. This neglect bred dire conditions and desperate measures.

The catastrophic failings of medical care at Abu Ghraib put American lives at risk and violated the United States' obligations to care decently for detainees. The soldiers who snapped and posed for the photos of abuse are being called to account. But the focus on their culpability diverts attention from the causal relationship between the Pentagon's priorities and the hellish conditions that both prisoners and their captors endured. This larger story, of conditions that ensured neglect and invited cruelty, is being ignored.


M. Gregg Bloche teaches law and health policy at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities, where Jonathan H. Marks is a visiting fellow in bioethics.
The following letter is to this Countries Top “Justice Official”
By Marjorie Cohn
Monday 10 January 2005

Dear Mr. Gonzales,

You, have been rewarded, for your unflinching loyalty to George W. Bush with a nomination for Attorney General of the United States. As White House Counsel, you have walked in lockstep with the President. As Attorney General, you will be charged with representing all the people of the United States. Your performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday verified that you will continue to be a yes-man for Bush once you are confirmed.

In the face of interrogation by members of the Committee, you waffled, equivocated, lied, feigned lack of memory, and even remained silent, in the face of the most probing questions. Your refusals to answer prompted Senator Patrick Leahy to say, "Mr. Gonzales, I'd almost think that you'd served in the Senate, you've learned how to filibuster so well."

Even though the Department of Justice retracted the August 2002 torture memo, and replaced it with a new one on the eve of your confirmation hearing, you still refuse to denounce the old memo's narrow and illegal definition of torture. You permitted that definition to remain as government policy for 2 1/2 years, which enabled the torture of countless prisoners in U.S. custody.

You continually evaded inquiries about your responsibility for drafting the now-repudiated memo by portraying yourself as a mere conduit for legal opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. This puzzled Senator Russ Feingold, who said, "If you were my lawyer, I'd sure want to know your opinion about something like that."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told you, "I think we've dramatically undermined the war effort by getting on the slippery slope in terms of playing cute with the law, because it's come back to bite us." Indeed, 12 retired professional military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces wrote to the Judiciary Committee, expressing "deep concern" about your nomination because detention and interrogation operations which you appeared to have "played a significant role in shaping" have "undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world."

When Senator Graham, an Air Force judge advocate, asked you if you agreed with a professional military lawyer's opinion that the August memo may have put our troops in jeopardy, you were tongue tied. You said nothing for several embarrassing seconds, until Senator Graham suggested you think it over and respond later.

When Senator Richard Durbin asked "Do you believe there are circumstances where other legal restrictions, like the War Crimes Act, would not apply to U.S. personnel?" you again sat mute for several seconds, and then asked to respond later.

It is alarming, Mr. Gonzales, that a lawyer with your pedigree would be stumped into silence by these questions.

You have taken the unprecedented step of advising the President that the Geneva Conventions have become "obsolete." You testified that since "we are fighting a new type of enemy and a new type of war," you "think it is appropriate to revisit whether or not Geneva should be revisited." You admitted preliminary discussions are already underway.

The 12 former military leaders wrote, "Repeatedly in our past, the United States has confronted foes that, at the time they emerged, posed threats of a scope or nature unlike any we had previously faced. But we have been far more steadfast in the past in keeping faith with our national commitment to the rule of law."

Mr. Gonzales, you have concurred in, even commissioned, advice that led to the following:

Now ….Please read the following it is what our country is-was-has-in secret-been doing & “It Must Stop NOW”

Sodomy with a broomstick, chemical light, metal object

Severe beatings

Water boarding (simulated drowning) (White House approves this method at this very moment Jan 2005)

Electric shock

Attaching electrodes to private parts

Forced masturbation

Pulling out fingernails

Pushing lit cigarettes into ears

Chaining hand and foot in fetal position without food or water

Forced standing on one leg in the sun

Feigned suffocation

Gagging with duct tape

Tormenting with loud music and strobe lights

Sleep deprivation

Hooding

Subjecting to freezing/sweltering temperatures

"Dietary manipulation"

Repeated, prolonged rectal exams

Hanging by arms from hooks

Permitting serious dog bites

Bending back fingers

Intense isolation for more than 3 months

Grabbing genitals

Severe burning

Stacking of naked prisoners in pyramids

Injecting with drugs

Leaving bullet in body of wounded prisoner

Taping naked prisoner to board

Shooting into containers with men inside

Keeping prisoners in small, outdoor cages

Pepper spraying in face

Forcing heads into toilets and flushing

Threatening live burial, drowning, electrocution, rape and death

Beating prisoners to death

Killing wounded prisoners

Throwing off bridge into river and drowning

Rape

Murder

Saddam Hussein would be proud of you, Mr. Gonzales.

Perhaps most alarming was your response to Senator Durbin's question, "Can U.S. personnel legally engage in torture under any circumstances?" You answered, "I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that." You failed to give a categorical "no" answer. You surely know, Mr. Gonzales, that the Convention Against Torture prohibits torture at any time. That treaty, ratified by the United States and therefore part of the Supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."

Mr. Gonzales, based on your record and your performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have critical concerns about your appointment as Attorney General. I believe you would stand mute if George W. Bush told you he planned to collapse the three branches of government into one, destroying the Constitutional separation of powers. Even though Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives only Congress the authority "to make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water," you refused to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the President is not above the law. You think the President has the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. You would rationalize the torture of prisoners.

Where even the strident John Ashcroft thought prisoners in United States custody are entitled to due process, you designed the military tribunals to deny it to them.

As counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, you wrote abbreviated clemency memos in capital cases omitting crucial defenses such as ineffective assistance of counsel, even evidence of factual innocence. Your counsel led Bush to deny pardons in 56 of 57 death penalty cases.

You sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the American people for seven hours with a smug grin on your face, lying to us, knowing you will be confirmed.

Your testimony led the New York Times to opine, "Mr. Bush had made the wrong choice when he rewarded Mr. Gonzales for his loyalty," and the conservative Washington Post to say, "The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world." The Post concluded, "Those senators who are able to reach clear conclusions about torture and whether the United States should engage in it have reason for grave reservations about Mr. Gonzales."

You will have the distinction of being the first Latino Attorney General of the United States. You come from humble roots in Humble, Texas. You should understand the struggles of people of color, yet you have turned your back on them. As overseer of the policies that led to the torture of myriad people of color in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, you have betrayed your roots.

Your actions have shamed us in the eyes of the world and endangered our fighting men and women.

You do not deserve to be our country's top prosecutor, head of the Department of Justice, charged with protecting our civil rights.

Mr. Gonzales, you should be ashamed.

******************************************

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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST ARE THE PROOF THE TOP WAS INFORMED ABOUT TORTURE BEING USED

PROOF (Navy - FBI documents here)
PROOF (Navy - DOA documents here)
In Good Conscience (more PROOF)
In one case, a detainee said that while at Adhamiya Palace, his nose was pinched while water was poured down his throat, a wooden stick was inserted forcefully into his anus and electric shock was applied to his genitals. Some of the allegations were directed against Iraqi policemen. One contractor who said he was assigned to screen detainees brought to Abu Ghraib said that many who had come from Adhamiya arrived with serious injuries, including one boy with a bleeding rectum. He said the boy had told him that an Iraqi policeman had sodomized him with a soda bottle and that American soldiers were present.

(NY Times January 25 2005)
Doctor -> Torture (PROOF)
Gonzales Told Bush Torture Memo (PROOF)
oh! by the way., Rummy charged with WAR CRIMES in Germany

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