Oppose Gonzales the torturer

The full Senate will consider confirmation of the Attorney General nominee soon.

Please write to your senators to oppose this nominee. I have posted the letter I sent to mine here.

"And now we find in his written responses that he attempts to carve out exception to the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment on the false basis that non-citizens rounded up in the Terror War without evidence simply do not deserve any protection from the president’s maniacal techniques.

This is the sordid role of Alberto Gonzales. His hands are bloody. He oversaw an interdepartmental, self-serving re-writing of 790 years of civilization, then stood by and watched as thousands of detainees suffered the consequences. These episodes will sully the United States for all history. It truly amazes me that a scoundrel of this magnitude would receive even the slightest consideration for high office in the United States of America."

When will it end?

Will any new report of lies, horrors, duplicity, hypocrisy, and flat out war crimes finally lead to true accountability for the president’s Gestapo-like program in Iraq?

If we had not acted, the torture chambers would still be in operation.

Vice President Dick Cheney
July 24, 2003


For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, the capture of Saddam brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.

The capture of the former Iraqi dictator is crucial to the rise of a free Iraq. It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name.

White House Press Release
December 17, 2003


Because our coalition acted, Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are closed.

President Bush
Stock 2004 campaign phrase used frequently both before and after the Abu Ghraib photos hit the media in late April.


Despite the horrific acts of the terrorists in Iraq, there are going to be free elections in Iraq in January. And think how far that country has come from the days of torture chambers and mass graves. Freedom is on the march, freedom is on the move around the world.

President Bush
Stock campaign phrase, October 2004


Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by a human rights organization.

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.

Torture in Iraq Still Routine, Report Says
Detainees Beaten, Hung by Wrists, Shocked by Security Forces, Rights Group Finds; Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A10

Server disruption

Our hosting company tells us that intermittent service disruputions are possible now through the weekend. They are moving the server that hosts Deep Blade and The Practical Pantry to a new, larger datacenter. If you can't reach Deep Blade, try a little later, it should be back quickly.

Iraq election madness

Violence, TV work in favor of the puppet


Allawi & Bush: Their mission? Stop "terrorists who want to disrupt progress in Iraq"; or is it to stop the Iraqi people from taking control of their own history?

Have you noticed that it is very difficult to find presented in US media any mention of the candidates, programs, or of even the most basic idea of what is at stake in the coming Iraqi vote? What directions would the various parliamentary slates take the country? We get mostly Bushian sap about the wonders of Democracy, but nothing about how this grand vision might apply in a country meeting the brutal war crimes of the American occupation with an increasingly violent anti-colonial resistance.

Presumably, if the puppet prime minister Iyad Allawi keeps power in Iraq, he would give the US a blank check to operate its military in the country. But what of the other slates? Would any reject the US and ask it to leave, as polls within Iraq have for a long time consistently shown at least four out of five Iraqis desire?

I will make a prediction. Somehow, Allawi will keep power after the January 30 election date. I'm not basing this on any specific knowledge, just a hunch. As Chomsky would say, democracy is fine as long as the correct choices are made and as long as the resulting government takes orders from its master. And recent reports of secret telephone conferences between the White House, Allawi, and Jordan's King Abdullah portend that something is up.

Meanwhile in Iraq, the contest hardly registers in the country as it is wracked by American and resistance violence. Iraqis face a gas and fuel crisis, lack of reconstruction, problems with clean water and medical facilities -- much suffering resulting directly from the American action.

This is an absolutely crazy environment for an election. But, the Bush-insistent process moves forward. As far as I can tell, it seems to boil down to two possible parliamentary slates -- the United Iraqi Alliance, which is led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (the party head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq), and Bush puppet Iyad Allawi's mostly secular Iraqi List. These two are the ones that look like they might come out on top, out of the 7,000 candidates representing 111 parties vying for the 275 parliamentary seats.

If Allawi wins, US domination of the political process is assured. Only the Shiite coalition stands a chance of being any sort of alternative.

The two slates are seeking victory in different ways. The Iraqi List is using a good old American-style media campaign to promote Allawi, who otherwise has zero constituency. On the other hand, UIA has a large, ready Shiite constituency. So it should win easily. It apparently is working to get clerical support, most significantly from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. According to a posting by Juan Cole, Sistani may now be "throwing his support to the slate of the United Iraqi Alliance."

Cole also mentions that "The UIA candidates continue to face severe danger. Al-Hakim narrowly missed being assassinated recently."

It's hard to find any discussion of the details in the US press, but Voice of America ran this quite interesting piece on the contest. In "Violence mars Iraqi candidates' ability to reach voters", VOA reports that

The near-daily violence aimed at derailing the elections has presented candidates and their slates extreme challenges, as well as opportunities, for reaching voters.

For the second time in less than three weeks, the leader of the Democratic Islamic Party, Mithal al-Alousi escaped the fate of his predecessor, killed in late December by Sunni Muslim insurgents and terrorists opposed to holding elections in Iraq....Chain-smoking to calm his frayed nerves, Mr. Alousi expresses deep frustration, complaining that he and his running mates are being forced to spend time, not canvassing for votes, but trying to stay alive....

Two of the largest, and the richest, slates on the ballot are the 225-member United Iraqi Alliance, a powerhouse coalition of mostly-Shiite groups, and the largely secular Iraqi List, led by the interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

By far, the Iraqi list has been the most aggressive in buying airtime on television. (emphasis added)

So that's how they're doing it -- selling Allawi on TV as the tough hand against the violence. For Allawi, more violence is better. No one else can run a campaign, the candidates are too scared to be in public. Allawi dominates on television. It's only the Shiite UIA left standing in the way of Bush/Allawi domination. Is it so hard to believe -- with Bush in charge and all potential voters living in a climate of deep-seated fear -- that some sort of chicanery, perhaps including supressing votes (violence is perfect for that), stuffing the ballot boxes, and gathering votes from the diaspora would come into play?

The New York Times and Washington Post both had recent stories concerning the election environment. Judge for yourself what all this means:

Rising Violence and Fear Drive Iraq Campaigners Underground

The threat of death hung so heavily over the election rally, held this week on the fifth floor of the General Factory for Vegetable Oil, that the speakers refused to say whether they were candidates at all.

Anxious Iraqis Are Leaving Before Elections

...At another travel agency nearby, Abu Ahmed, 41, bought three airline tickets to Amman, Jordan, for his family. Although he is a member of Baghdad's electoral commission, he said he planned to leave within days.

"I will not stay in Baghdad during the election," Abu Ahmed said. He said that when he arrived home last week, three strange men in a blue sedan were waiting outside and one of them put a knife to his neck.

"I think that was enough warning for me," he said.

Update 1/19/2005 14:45: I fixed a bad sentence and the link that goes with the photo. The BBC hourly news has an Iraqi election official saying that the ballots & ballot boxes are ready for distribution. People "will know" where to vote. But isn't it a mockery of an election when the polling places are only defined at the very last minute? The voters will find out the locations no sooner than the bombers will.

Bush war crimes: a sense of total impunity

Naomi Klein has tough words for Kerrycrats


"Lefts and progressives became deeply complicit in the dehumanization of Iraqis."

If you have a chance to catch this week's installment of David Barsamian's Alternative Radio, "Debacle in Iraq" featuring Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, do so.

President Bush has openly and blatantly underlined one of Klein's main points in remarks reported yesterday in the Washington Post:

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said .... "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

That particular point, of course, is that Bush now rules in a "culture of impunity," under the supercharged notion that you can commit horrible war crimes and pay nothing for them. Inside the smirky exterior, I can see Bush relishing the dictatorial triumph of his torture-is-okay November victory.

Careful readers of this weblog will recall that I endorsed Kerry myself. Please see Deep Blade's cooperative Kerry endorsement, There is a Choice from October 28. This group of environmentally-oriented bloggers tended towards the position that Klein attacked.

But while I accept what Klein is saying, I also defend the decision to endorse Kerry -- mainly on grounds that Klein herself emphasizes. That is, lacking any powerful anti-war movement, I saw a vote for Kerry -- despite Kerry's well-understood pro-war orientation -- as the only way to deny Bush the "sense of total impunity" that he now has.

From this perspective, I feel it is duplicitous for Klein to accuse us -- those of us who have been protesting from the beginning, at least -- of complicity in US crimes against Iraq. Still, it is totally fair for her to ask why that powerful anti-war movement was not present to influence the election in the first place. Activists (myself included) do need to accept collective responsibility on that level. Klein's talk does provide some additional speculation. Give it a listen.

Iraq election a ruse
Another area in which Naomi Klein gave deeply insightful remarks in this talk concerns the upcoming Iraqi election and the insistent US-driven process that has led up to it. A key web resource containing much of the background for her remarks is her article Baghdad Year Zero from the September 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine.

The election is a ruse. It is designed mainly to ensure the continuation of US authority over Iraq. Just to underscore, in the talk Klein describes how the US has used oil-for-food lists as the basis to register voters, and now pushes ahead with the election despite violence 100 times more serious than one year ago. Both of these rationale were used to diffuse the push one year ago for early elections by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and his followers. The US, with UN complicity, achieved a long delay while successfully inserting the puppet government at the end of June 2004. Klein argues that this process has been a major betrayal of the Iraqi people by the US and the UN, with facilitation of neoliberal economic transformation (i.e. looting of Iraq) not a small motivating factor.

So they are going ahead despite inability to recruit election workers, the need for a "driving ban" to reduce the possibility of car bombs, failure to determine or release polling locations, election lists without candidate names, and on and on. It's a mockery of democracy.

My thinking on this is that the empire is not going to allow independent control of Iraq by an Iran-sympathetic Islamist Shiite government led or controlled by Mullahs, is it? I ask, is there a chance the election might be subverted Bush/Allawi's way through shenanigans -- vote suppression, duplicating ballots, or gathering of votes from the diaspora (see this big pr release)?

The violence works in Bush's/Allawi's favor in this regard. A climate of fear is perfect for a Bush-led election. Remember that Bush and Company control the process.

Even if the Shiite "Unified Iraqi Coalition" ends up on top, it'll be really hard for them to take any real power, especially with respect to ordering the US military what it can do, where it should go, or that it should get out, for example. And Bush is willing to go to the mat. If resistance continues to look too bad and impossible to get Allawi over the top, they might put the thing off at the last minute to keep Allawi in there. If the Shiites don't like that, or when they find out they don't have the power they think they won, it'll get rough. I would be deeply saddened, but not surprised, if Bush took to flattening more cities when he feels he has to. He will not let go this thing that is so big and important in making the history he wants to make.

Missile defense glitches explained

The system "would work" if nothing went wrong


Graphic credit: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Missile defense is of course a joke -- a costly joke on taxpayers, and a very dangerous joke on the people of the US and the world. Physicist Bob Park runs a great little once-a-week science news service -- called What's New -- that has been covering this comedy/horror show for a long time.

Today he posts again on missile defense, this time following Wednesday's comments by Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering III, director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, reported yesterday in the Washington Post.

Obering explained that just a little tweak of a "very minor" computer software glitch is all that is needed to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic failure suffered in a December 15 test:

Obering expressed confidence that the system "would work" if pressed into service against relatively simple enemy targets, meaning warheads without complex decoys or other measures for deceiving U.S. interceptors....He added that his agency had met its responsibility to field most of the system's initial components last year. Those components, which include tracking radars, communication links and control networks along with the interceptors, have been run through "shakedown" exercises in recent weeks and have been shown ready to go on alert if necessary.

Let's hope that no potential enemy with nuclear arms begins to firmly believe this provocative Pentagon nightmare ever actually could work. Working US defensive missiles would crack the perception that America would never launch a first strike with our now-superior offensive systems because of the retaliation that is now possible. Adoption by an enemy of our own Bush Doctrine -- threats must be neutralized before they fully emerge -- may one day boomerang on us.

January history on Iraq WMD

Two years ago, one year ago, and today...

At a photo op. where President Bush and Polish President Kwasniewski allowed a brief press availability:

Q: The weapons inspectors say they need until March, maybe six months, maybe a year. Is this what you had in mind when you went to the UN back in September?

PRESIDENT BUSH: What I have in mind for Saddam Hussein is to disarm. The United Nations spoke with one voice. We said, we expect Saddam Hussein, for the sake of peace, to disarm. That's the question: Is Saddam Hussein disarming? He's been given 11 years to disarm. And so the world came together and we have given him one last chance to disarm. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is disarming.

Time is running out on Saddam Hussein. He must disarm. I'm sick and tired of games and deception. And that's my view of timetables.

The Oval Office
January 14, 2003

From a White House booklet seeking to prove that Saddam is a rogue weapons possessor, worse than other states who voluntarily relinquished their stocks:

We have many reports of WMD material being buried, concealed in lakes, relocated to agricultural areas and private homes, or hidden beneath Mosques or hospitals. In one report such material was buried in the banks of the Tigris river during a low water period. Furthermore, according to these reports, the material is moved constantly, making it difficult to trace or to find without absolutely fresh intelligence.

What Does Disarmament Look Like?
The White House
January 2003

Fast forward a year. Dick Cheney was still standing as a true Iraq WMD hawk:

We know, for example, that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program. Now it's not clear at this stage whether or not he used any of that to produce or whether he was simply getting ready for the next war. That, in my mind, is a serious danger in the hands of a man like Saddam Hussein, and I would deem that conclusive evidence, if you will, that he did, in fact, have programs for weapons of mass destruction.

Dick Cheney
Unchallenged interview with Juan Williams
NPR's Morning Edition
January 22, 2004

Then at another photo op. where President Bush and Polish President Kwasniewski allowed a brief press availability, also in January 2004:

Q: Mr. President, a year ago you said the dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction. Are you still confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, given what Dr. Kay has said?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me first compliment Dr. Kay for his work. I appreciate his willingness to go to Iraq and I appreciate his willingness to gather facts. And the Iraq Survey Group will continue to gather facts.

There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know. We know from years of intelligence -- not only our own intelligence services, but other intelligence gathering organizations -- that he had weapons -- after all, he used them. He had deep hatred in his heart for people who love freedom. We know he was a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world. We know that he defied the United Nations year after year after year. And given the events of September the 11th, we know we could not trust the good intentions of Saddam Hussein, because he didn't have any.

There is no doubt in my mind the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. America is more secure, the world is safer, and the people of Iraq are free.

The Oval Office
January 27, 2004

Today The Washington Post reports in Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month:

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered US troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Washington Post
January 12, 2005

I guess this is as fresh as the intelligence gets in this exercise of games, deception and other official mendacity. Please see an excellent post by Rodger Payne for additional pithy comments and more links.

Update 1/13/2005: I remembered and added the Cheney quote.

More unbelievable every day

It's back to the future with the death squad "option" in Iraq


New version of ribbon symbol for jingo cars

One [Salvadoran] death squad member, when asked about the types of tortures used, replied: "Uh, well, the same things you did in Vietnam. We learned from you. We learned from you the means, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls. But for the "toughest ones" -- that is, those who resist these other tortures -- "we have to pop their eyes out with a spoon. You have to film it to believe it, but boy, they sure sing."

Raymond Bonner
Weakness and Deceit
June 1984

That quote via Billmon, who has a bunch more.

As we were heading up the interstate from Portland yesterday when Democracy Now! came on the radio reporting about the "Salvador option" described in a recent Newsweek story. I should be used to it by now, but my jaw dropped nonetheless. I don't know how many more of these offenses to humanity of the American government that I can take. They've come like a flood in the run-up to the utterly bankrupt US election process in Iraq. I suppose it's good that I can still feel how wrong this all is -- how wrong my country is -- in its current policy of occupation, torture, and death.

I believe Mahajan is correct in Empire Notes about the thrust behind the brutal policies of torture and now death squads in the Iraq occupation:

The truth of the matter is that, just as torture isn’t really primarily about extracting information, death squads aren’t primarily about killing particular people who are judged to be a threat. The true rationale for both is to create a climate of pervasive fear.

I'll go further. I say that the extreme violence and bombings carried out by the Iraqi resistance are just fine with Bush and Allawi -- it all engenders the climate of fear that Bush just loves to have during his elections.

Come January 31, Bush will speak of the bravery of the Iraqis who will apparently put Allawi's parliamentary slate over the top, thus giving the election an air of legitimacy that it will not have.

Amy Goodman (on Democracy Now!) and Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints (see Monday Jan. 10) both had interviews on the "Salvador option" with Allan Nairn on the plan to bring aggressive new death squads to Iraq. Nairn broke some important Salvador stories 20 years ago following an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 1985 report remains classified.

Also see Seymour Hersh's piece on "preëmptive manhunting" where he compares the US Special Forces Task Force 121 to the Vietnam era Phoenix Program.

Bali bombers flown to tsunami relief sites
Yesterday, in the same interviews mentioned above, Nairn talked about another story that was in the New York Times Monday. And, mother of God, that one oughta be a BLOCKBUSTER too for everyone who thought the US and its tenuous Indonesian allies were against radical Islamists, who are all just out to destroy America (though it won't) -- Indonesia is flying in Qaeda-connected terrorists to "help" with disaster relief in Aceh.

ALLAN NAIRN: ... Well, Colin Powell announced that the U.S. would be supplying spare parts for C-130 transport planes ostensibly to help with the relief effort, the Indonesian military transport planes. Within days of Powell making this announcement, it came out that the Indonesian military, which had previously used these planes to transport the goods looted from East Timor, as they were destroying East Timor in 1999 to take thousands of Timorese civilian prisoners out after the 1999 campaign of slaughter in Timor, which previously have been used to drop paratroops over Aceh, were now used just in the past week to bring members of two Bin Laden affiliated Indonesian groups, the FPI and the MMI, the Islamic Defenders Front and the Islamic Mujahadin Council, they flew them up to Aceh, ostensibly to help in the relief effort. These groups were created or - well the FPI was in part created by the Indonesian armed forces, and the MMI has received backing from Indonesian military intelligence at various points. The MMI includes Laskar Jihad a group the went into Malukus and helped spark sectarian fighting between Muslim and Christian peasants, Muslim and Christian militias, in which thousands were killed. This was done to create chaos, which the Indonesian military could then take advantage of. And these groups are openly connected to Bin Laden and espouse that ideology.

These were the 2002 Bali bombers! Is the US through its Indonesian client using them to take advantage of the opportunity to clean out a movement that Indonesia is determined to crush, and so prevent from achieving independence in the manner of the Timorese? The American public thusfar has a very poor understanding of blowback, its role in 911, and how all this could backfire too.

Hearing lies

Bad apple theory continuing in full swing


What Commander-in-Chief override?

I'm watching the Gonzales hearings with jaw-dropped amazement.

Do you approve of torture?
"Absolutely not."

Geneva Convention?
"When it applies..."

Do you condemn the techniques shown in the photos?
Yes. We will prosecute... [just the bad apples, apparently]

Later... Gonzales says that the president has ordered that the US will not use torture, does not condone torture, did not in the past order torture. But, he would not answer a question about the president's right to override laws and treaties against torture.

And when it is torture? Only when it causes extreme pain organ failure or death (as the supposedly repudiated Bybee memo? Repudiated? Senator Kennedy says harsh treatment continues to this day.

Kennedy has been best so far at bringing up the actual acts that happened in the field following the memos Gonzales produced. These are what really belie the rotten apple theory -- the widespread use of the "techniques" across many US Terror War facilities in many different contexts.

Later the "the ticking bomb" of supposedly "high-value" detainees was addressed. My question: Did "waterboarding" and other torture techniques help in obtaining any accurate, important information?

Update: Were just protecting the country from "unlawful combatants".

The Animals! Let's turn their countries into our battlefields to avenge 911, scoop up anyone there we feel like, and torture them! That oughta protect us...

Oy.

To the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary...

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

FAX TO: (202) 224-9102

Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut disseisietur de libero tenemento suo, vel libertatibus, vel liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terræ.

Translation
"No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." --The Magna Carta (AD 1215), Chapter 39

Gentlemen:
Should the United States Senate reward an individual who has had a key role in approving interrogation and confinement techniques that are tantamount to torture with confirmation to the office of Attorney General? Should the Senate rubber stamp this nominee for the highest law enforcement office in the land without a complete investigation of his role in reported proposals for perpetual confinement of persons without the benefit of evidence, due process of law, or judgment of peers? I think not.

To do so would shame the Senate – indeed all of America – in the eyes of the world by signaling that America is happy to have a person heading the Justice Department who is willing to declare that the power of the US executive nullifies the precepts of the Magna Carta and all of the fundamental concepts of human rights inherent in 790 years of enlightened treatment of enemies and criminal suspects that have developed after it.

Mr. Gonzales, in his role in the White House Office of Legal Council, transmitted through a series of memos a theory that on the president's sole authority in his self-declared Terror War, the United States may disengage from the Geneva Conventions; US law; the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – all of which provide that no one may be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. There are no exceptions.

But the legal theories in the memos Mr. Gonzales wrote or coordinated evidently percolated into the field. A January 1, 2005 article in the New York Times reported that, "[An] interrogator said that when new interrogators arrived [at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba] they were told they had great flexibility in extracting information from detainees because the Geneva Conventions did not apply at the base."

This totally belies the facile explanation that a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib acted in a way "inconsistent with our policies and our values as a Nation."

Instead, these foreseeable consequences emanated from the Gonzales theory. The examples below of extreme cruelty at the hands of US interrogators in Guantánamo, Iraq, and other detention venues were reported not by the prisoners themselves, but in official documents made public over the last few months. The reports were confirmed by concerned observers who spoke with journalists:

· involuntary injection of a prisoner with a tranquilizer

· prisoner put in sensory deprivation garb and blackened goggles

· prisoners shackled in uncomfortable positions for many hours

· prisoners left to soil themselves

· prisoners wrapped in humiliating positions while exposed to blaring music or incessant meowing

· forcible enema

· sleep deprivation

· flashing lights in prisoners' eyes

· preventing visits by the Red Cross

· sexual humiliation, including squeezing of testicles, sexual taunts by female interrogators, sodomizing with a rifle muzzle, forced public masturbation, and piling prisoners into naked human pyramids

· shackling in fetal positions for 24 hours or more

· deprivation of food and water

· forcing prisoners' heads into the dirt

· prisoner placed in a sleeping bag and tied with an electrical cord

· strangulation

· beatings

· burning, including placing lit cigarettes into prisoners' ears and dousing a prisoner with alcoholic liquid and setting on fire

· terrorizing prisoners with military dogs

· rape of a juvenile male prisoner

· chaining in a cold room/hot room

· striking a prisoner with an empty 5 gallon plastic water jug

· administering electric shocks

· use of Taser guns on prisoners

· killing through dragging by the neck and other unknown means

· mock executions

· cuffing and pouring cold water on a subject in an act called the scorpion

· prisoner photographed with a pistol being held to head

· dragging of feet over barbed wire

· hooking wires on the hands and feet of a hooded prisoner who was told to stand on a box or else be electrocuted

By any rational interpretation, these practices are torture practices. But President Bush has said on several occasions that the US has a "commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture." To believe the president we must abandon reality and accept a re-definition of what torture is. This was the sordid role of Alberto Gonzales. He oversaw an interdepartmental, self-serving re-writing of 790 years of civilization. It truly amazes me that a scoundrel of this magnitude would receive even the slightest consideration for high office in the United States of America.

By confirming Alberto Gonzales, the Senate, with voluminous records to the contrary at hand, will go on record endorsing the duplicitous assurances given by the president to the world community in the weeks after the Abu Ghraib photos became public and since. For example, President Bush released a statement on June 26, 2004 reading in part:

The non-negotiable demands of human dignity must be protected without reference to race, gender, creed, or nationality. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law...

We will investigate and prosecute all acts of torture and undertake to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment in all territory under our jurisdiction. American personnel are required to comply with all U.S. laws, including the United States Constitution, Federal statutes, including statutes prohibiting torture, and our treaty obligations with respect to the treatment of all detainees.

The United States also remains steadfastly committed to upholding the Geneva Conventions, which have been the bedrock of protection in armed conflict for more than 50 years. These Conventions provide important protections designed to reduce human suffering in armed conflict. We expect other nations to treat our service members and civilians in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Our Armed Forces are committed to complying with them and to holding accountable those in our military who do not.

Such quaint notions recurred in a new White House Legal Council memo released last Thursday, supposedly repudiating previous torture memos. But should we trust this verbiage, given that many of the internal FBI reports describing torture practices made public last month were dated in late June of last year, after the Abu Ghraib photos and just as the president released the above statement? Any senator who votes to confirm Gonzales is voting on the belief that either the public at large does not know about, does not care about, or maybe even supports this inhuman treatment of Terror War detainees.

This would invite shame of the highest degree. It is the responsibility of our elected legislators to check the executive. In this case, failure to perform this function will have extraordinary consequences. The wrong signal will be sent worldwide. Even if unlike me you care not a wit for the humanity and right to fair treatment of our Terror War detainees, please consider the potential negative consequences for our own troops.

I am unable to state the case that Gonzales requires careful scrutiny better than a dozen high-ranking retired military officers including retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As you are aware, they wrote, "Today, it is clear that these [detention] operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world."

There is the big kicker – all this torture and no useful intelligence has been obtained. This is an unmitigated disaster for our country.

From my own point of view, I am in complete agreement with a December 23, 2004 Washington Post editorial stating that

Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

The title of this Post editorial? War Crimes. That is what you endorse if you endorse Alberto Gonzales.

The Post editorial concludes:

The record of the past few months suggests that the administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record...For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government.

Please prove the Post wrong. Show us that official crimes are taken seriously. For the sake of the honor of our country, for the sake of perhaps thousands of mostly innocent people detained and tortured in our Terror War, for the sake of our own troops, and for the sake of the humanity of every single American, I implore you to reject the nomination of Alberto Gonzales.