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Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 18:14:47 -0600 (CST)<br>
From: center for constitutional rights
<investigation@ccr-ny.org><br><br>
We are now asking for your help again. Please find below a letter from
Ron Daniels, our executive director, asking you to take a moment to write
your legislature and urge them to deny Alberto Gonzales the nomination to
attorney general. We appreciate your involvement in our work. If you do
not wish to receive emails from CCR in the future, please respond to this
email with remove from list in the subject line.<br><br>
<br><br>
<b>Tough Questions Are Not Enough<br><br>
<br><br>
Dear Friends and opponents of torture</b>,<br><br>
<br><br>
President Bush's nomination of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to be
the next Attorney General would elevate the architect of the
Administration?s torture policy to the position of the chief law
enforcement officer in the land. His confirmation hearing begins on
January 5.
<a href="http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=4445601&url_num=1&url=http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert"><b><i>Please
help us oppose this travesty of justice, tell your representatives:
"tough questions are not enough." Send a message to the Bush
Administration and the world that the American people do not condone
torture.</a> <br><br>
</i></b> <br><br>
Mr. Gonzales is the author of the infamous ?torture memo? that called the
Geneva Conventions "obsolete" and "quaint," and he
has argued for virtually limitless presidential power to evade or
circumvent laws and treaties on the theory that the Commander-in-Chief is
not accountable to the Judiciary as it relates to the "war against
terrorism." The memos Gonzales authored and commissioned paved
the way to the abuse and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu
Ghraib, many of whom are represented by the Center for Constitutional
Rights. At CCR, we have seen the terrible effect of the evasion of
the rule of law on human beings first hand. There is no question but that
there is a causal link between the memoranda and other directives devised
by Mr. Gonzales and the horrible infractions committed by officers in the
field. <br><br>
As White House counsel, Gonzales consistently treated the law as an
inconvenient obstacle and ignored the expertise of those who disagreed
with him. He argued that U.S. citizens could be held incommunicado and
stripped of the right to counsel and the right to challenge their
detention in a court of law for as long as the President deemed
necessary. He hosted meetings where they discussed the use of specific
torture techniques, including mock burial and ?water boarding,? where the
victim is made to feel that he is drowning. Gonzales and his circle
approved the use of dogs, hooding, and extreme sensory deprivation, all
forbidden by the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant
Against Torture. He redefined torture to limit it to only those actions
that lead to organ failure, death or permanent psychological damage.
Gonzales justified this relaxed definition of torture on the grounds that
in a time of war, interrogators need to extract information
from prisoners quickly to save American lives. However, it has long
been established by experts in the field that torture leads to false
confessions and bad intelligence. The policies advocated by Mr.
Gonzales will expose our own troops to danger the world over for decades
to come.<br><br>
<br><br>
In their scathing editorial on the nomination, <i>The Washington Post</i>
linked Mr. Gonzales directly to the tortures at Abu Ghraib and called his
legal positions "damaging and erroneous." <i>Newsweek</i> wrote
that "Gonzales ultimately signed off on all of the administration's
most controversial legal moves."<br><br>
<br><br>
Many members of Congress have said that they will not oppose Mr.
Gonzales's nomination, that he will only be made to answer tough
questions before sailing through the confirmation process. We at the
Center for Constitutional Rights object to giving an architect of torture
a promotion. We reiterate,<b> <i>tough questions are not enough</i></b>.
Please ask your Congressional representatives and the members of the
Senate Judiciary Committee to stand up and oppose the nomination of
Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. We hope you will join us in
declaring that this man and his policies do not represent who we are as
Americans!<br><br>
<br><br>
Please circulate this widely and quickly, the hearings begin the first
week of the New Year! To send a letter, click
<a href="http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=4445601&url_num=2&url=http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert">here.</a><br><br>
<br><br>
If the hyperlink does not work, cut and paste:
<a href="http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=4445601&url_num=3&url=http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert">http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert</a>
in your browser<br><br>
<br><br>
Sincerely yours,<br><br>
<br><br>
Ron Daniels<br><br>
Executive Director<br><br>
Center for Constitutional Rights<br>
<img src="cid:6.1.2.0.2.20041223054430.020fa8c8@66.103.156.66.0" width=1 height=1 alt="119bc0.jpg"> <br>
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