Weekly Torture Action Letter 22 – Thank You Sen. Feingold

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Happy Monday and welcome to the Weekly Torture Action Letter series. This is a letter writing campaign for torture accountability. The basic idea is every Monday (yeah, the Dog knows, it is Tuesday, but the hound had to do a Labor Day post out of solidarity) the Dog writes a letter to the nations decision makers urging them to take action towards full accountability for the illegal Bush Administration state sponsored torture program. The way you get involved is by either cutting and pasting the letter over your own signature or using the topic of the letter as the jumping off point for your own. In either case the Dog provides the links to make this as easy as possible. The whole point of this campaign is to make sure our leaders don’t get distracted and forget their duties under the law to investigate and prosecute any act of torture.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

This week we are going to be writing a bit of a thank you letter. We will be thanking Sen. Russ Feingold for his calls for a much wider investigation than AG Holder has indicated he will authorize. It is important to thank our allies who are doing the right thing as it is to push our decision makers who are waffling.  In an attempt to do both we will be CC this to the President, the Attorney General, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, Judiciary Chair Conyers, Judiciary Chair Leahy and Rep. Nadler.

This week’s letter:

Dear Senator Feingold;

I am writing you today to express my thanks and support for your call for full investigations into the apparent state sponsored torture program of the Bush Administration.

As a citizen who is deeply invested in the idea of the rule of law, I am very happy to see at least a few of our elected officials are standing up for this primary pillar of our Republic. I know it can not be easy to call for a new Administration to criminally investigate the previous one, so your actions are to be commended. We must fully investigate the actions of the Bush Administration if the idea of equal justice under the law is to mean anything going forward.

It is a sad fact that when we recognize good works in this area we must immediately turn around and urge more, but it is what I am going to do today. Sen. Feingold, your calls for criminal investigations are great, but as a sitting Senator, I have to ask when will we see the results of the current Intelligence Committee report?  I understand it is not something that should come out in drips and drabs, but having a date we could expect the final report would be quite helpful.

Beyond this issue, when will the Judiciary Committee be investigating the actions of the Office of Legal Counsel? Even if we leave the spurious memos by Judge Bybee and Professor Yoo aside, there must be some light shined on the way this office was subverted for political purposes and some way found of preventing it in the future. This is very much in the preview of the Judiciary Committee. I ask you do your part in the oversight process to close the loophole which the Bush Administration apparently used to subvert our Federal statutes and our treaty obligations under the International Conventions Against Torture.

Again, thank you so much for your voice and hard work in this area. We are not even close to the resolution, so we can not let up in any avenue that assures there is accountability to the law for all citizens, regardless of political position or national prominence. To do otherwise is to undermine the very foundations of our country.

Regards,

CC:

President Obama

AG Holder

Speaker Pelosi

Majority Leader Reid

Judiciary Chair Leahy

Judiciary Chair Conyers

Rep. Nadler  

So, there is the letter, now for the links!

Sen. Russ Feingold

Department of Justice, attention AG Holder – [email protected]

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 up to you. If you care about the rule of law, if torture is anathema to you, if you believe we should all be equal before the law then this is the time to take action. It only takes a few minutes and it is the right thing to do. Please act now.

The floor is yours.