What: Senate questions Attorney General Mukasey
When: July 09, 9:30AM
Why: To shine a light on U.S. authorization of torture and abuse.
Remember the last time the Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, testified before Congress? He refused to state a clear position on the legality of water-boarding.
He also refused to identify the other so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques the CIA is using or his analysis of their legality. He simply and broadly assured the committee that they are all legal.
Since then, information about Bush Administration policies that led to abuse continues to be uncovered.
Tomorrow morning Congress has another opportunity to demand answers from the Attorney General, and Americans have another chance to find out what our government's policies on prisoner treatment actually are.
Urge Senators on the Judiciary Committee to ask tough questions of the AG! 1) Go to Human Rights First for their petition. 2) Perhaps FAX/CALL some of the following via any of their offices? If you have other suggestions, put them in comments or send to me: Connie newlease7@yahoo.com (See the names for the committee at end of this blog.
Just last week, the New York Times reported that the techniques used at Guantanamo were modeled on Korean War-era Chinese torture techniques designed to produce false confessions from downed American pilots. Obviously, we have yet to hear the full story, but we're getting there.
Here are just a few of the questions the Attorney General should answer:
RE: Destruction of the CIA tapes. The Attorney General initiated a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes. These tapes reportedly showed U.S. interrogators involved in torture and other cruel treatment including water-boarding, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold.
* What is the status of this criminal investigation?
* Will the Attorney General pledge to make the results of the investigation available to the public?
(Also look at the Attorney General's history and some constitutional lawyer's comments about him--such as Marjorie Cohn at marjoriecohn.com to find out how else to address your comments.)
DOJ Memos Authorizing Abuse. When he last testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, the Attorney General said that he would review legal opinions on CIA interrogation techniques signed by Steven Bradbury in 2005. According to the New York Times, these opinions provided explicit authorization for use of a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures and concluded that these techniques did not constitute "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment.
* Has he reviewed these memorandum? Does he agree with the analysis?
Ask Congress to lift the curtain on the Bush Administration's interrogation rules.
Thank you for helping us demand answers about the United States' position on torture.
If you search engine 'Senate Judiciary' you should be able to find more information. Somehow faxing often seems to get through better than calls, emails or letters or even petitions sometimes from what I understand.
Most of this blog is from:
Sharon Kelly Campaign Manager – Elect to End Torture '08 - Human Rights First
P.S. You can watch the hearing, scheduled for 9:30AM Eastern tomorrow, Wednesday, July 9, on C-SPAN or C-SPAN 2. Check back. Tell your friends about this.
Then go to some of the Senator's Websites later for reports as well as to The Bill of Rights Defense Committee's News and Home page, Democracy Now! Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com and MarjorieCohn.com --all sites that will probably have plenty to say about FISA and the Judiciary tomorrow.
3 comments:
From Glenn Greenwald's site on Salon.com: "...the Government and the telecoms broke the law not for weeks or months, but for years -- well into 2007. They continued to do so even after the NYT exposed what they were doing. They could have brought their spying activities into a legal framework at any time, but chose instead to spy on Americans in exactly the way our laws criminalize. Manifestly, then, national security had nothing to do with why they did it. The Bush administration chose to do so because they wanted to eavesdrop without oversight and to establish that neither Congress nor the courts can limit what the President does, and telecoms did not want to jeopardize the massive government surveillance contracts they have by refusing.
This was rampant, deliberate lawbreaking that lasted for many years. We either live under the rule of law or we don't. In a New York Times Op-Ed today jointly written by James Baker and Warren Christopher on the need to amend the War Powers Act to clarify Congress' role when the President commits troops to battle, they point out: "the 1973 statute has been regularly ignored -- a situation that undermines the rule of law, the centerpiece of American democracy." The Bush administration and the telecoms trampled upon that "centerpiece of American democracy," and the Democratic-led Congress is about to do the same.
A quite good Editorial in the NYT this morning -- entitled "Compromising the Constitution" -- notes that the real effects of this FISA bill are to make it "much easier to spy on Americans at home, reduce the courts' powers and grant immunity to the companies that turned over Americans' private communications without a warrant." And: "The real reason this bill exists is because Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was above the law."
Those who support this bill, by definition, support both warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and the right of the President and private corporations to break our laws with impunity. As the NYT Editorial puts it:
Proponents of the FISA deal say companies should not be "punished" for cooperating with the government. That's Washington-speak for a cover-up. The purpose of withholding immunity is not to punish but to preserve the only chance of unearthing the details of Mr. Bush's outlaw eavesdropping. Only a few senators, by the way, know just what those companies did.
Restoring some of the protections taken away by an earlier law while creating new loopholes in the Constitution is not a compromise. It is a failure of leadership."
The first comment was meant for the blog just below this one on FISA.
I am wondering how the FISA vote is going to be done with so many leader-dems in the Judiciary Committee?
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