ACTION ALERT: OPPOSE GONZALES

>> please forward widely >>
ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
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OPPOSE GONZALES AS ATTORNEY GENERAL!
Contact these key Senators first thing Wed. and urge a no vote:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), committee chair 202-224-4254
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), minority leader 202-224-4242
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) 202-224-4543
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) 202-224-5323
* additional action steps below *
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It appears that the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for U.S. Attorney General on Wednesday, January 26, with the full Senate voting early next week. There is an urgent need to flood the Senate with phone calls urging that Gonzales be rejected.

The actions of people like you around the country have already made a difference: the Judiciary Committee was expected to vote last week, but Democratic senators succeeded in pushing it back, no doubt in part because of constituent pressure.

During the Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales' responses to questions about the actuality of torture were evasive, full of "I don't remember" in regard to a very important and unprecedented memo on torture he gave the President and on memos he received about it from lawyers in the Justice Department. He explicitly repeated the Bush Administration's assertion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to people the Administration labels "enemy combatants." Even worse, he has not been willing to repudiate the definition of torture contained in the memo, a definition so extreme that it permits most forms of torture.

Now is the time to take action!

(1) The following members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are more likely than others to be responsive to pressure from people around the country. Make sure their offices are flooded with calls on Wednesday, as early in the day as possible:

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), committee chair 202-224-4254
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), minority leader 202-224-4242
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) 202-224-4543
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) 202-224-5323

(2) Call the two senators from your state and urge them to vote no on the Gonzales nomination, should it come to the floor of the Senate. If you do not have phone numbers for your senators, call 202-224-3121 and ask for their offices. Be sure to get your message to the staff person who is handling the confirmation issue.

(3) Activate your own networks, send this message to everyone you know, call your friends!! Do whatever you can to get the word out...Now is the time to make those calls to the Senate!!

For more information visit these websites:
Peace Action: http://www.peace-action.org
Center for Constitutional Rights: http://www.ccr-ny.org
Human Rights First: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/gonzales/index.asp

I mentioned on another thread that even Human Rights Watch opposes Gonzales:

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/24/usdom10064.htm

He's my senior Senator, so I figure I have a good excuse for e-mailing him.

Pity the e-mail I sent to Santorum won't be much use....

REAL Americans don't believe in torture!

This should be in the Congressional Record:

ALBERTO R. GONZALES was vague, unresponsive and misleading in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Bush administration's detention of foreign prisoners. In his written answers to questions from the committee, prepared in anticipation of today's vote on his nomination as attorney general, Mr. Gonzales was clearer -- disturbingly so, as it turns out. According to President Bush's closest legal adviser, this administration continues to assert its right to indefinitely hold foreigners in secret locations without any legal process; to deny them access to the International Red Cross; to transport them to countries where torture is practiced; and to subject them to treatment that is "cruel, inhumane or degrading," even though such abuse is banned by an international treaty that the United States has ratified. In effect, Mr. Gonzales has confirmed that the Bush administration is violating human rights as a matter of policy.

Mr. Gonzales stated at his hearing that he and Mr. Bush oppose "torture and abuse." But his written testimony to the committee makes clear that "abuse" is, in fact, permissible -- provided that it is practiced by the Central Intelligence Agency on foreigners held outside the United States. The Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994, prohibits not only torture but "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment." The Senate defined such treatment as abuse that would violate the Fifth, Eighth or 14th amendments to the Constitution -- a standard that the Bush administration formally accepted in 2003.

But Mr. Gonzales revealed that during his tenure as White House counsel, the administration twisted this straightforward standard to make it possible for the CIA to subject detainees to such practices as sensory deprivation, mock execution and simulated drowning. The constitutional amendments, he told the committee, technically do not apply to foreigners held abroad; therefore, in the administration's view the torture treaty does not bind intelligence interrogators operating on foreign soil. "The Department of Justice has concluded," he wrote, that "there is no legal prohibition under the Convention Against Torture on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas."

According to most legal experts, this is a gross distortion of the law. The Senate cited the constitutional amendments in ratifying the treaty precisely to set a clear standard that could be applied to foreigners. Nevertheless, Mr. Gonzales uses this false loophole to justify practices that contravene fundamental American standards. He was asked if there were any legal prohibition against U.S. personnel using simulated drowning and mock executions as well as sleep deprivation, dogs to inspire fear, hooding, forced nudity, the forced injection of mood-altering drugs and the threat of sending a detainee to another country for torture, among other abuses. He answered: "Some might . . . be permissible in certain circumstances."

A Degrading Policy....