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.