The Department of TORTURE

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As always we fature the action links first

 

http://www.nocrony.com/no_conservative.htm (Supreme Court)

 

http://www.nocrony.com/no_torture.htm (McCain Amendment)

 

ATROCITY THREATENS TO BECOME OFFICIAL U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

 

The Senate amendment to the new Defense Appropriations Act would

explicitly prohibit the U.S. government from subjecting those in

its custody to cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or

punishment. It's pretty straightforward stuff. Yet despite a

rousing 90-9 vote for its passage, there are still dark forces at

work trying to subvert the intent of this measure, the language of

which must survive the conference committee in the House of

Representatives.

 

If the morality perverters have their way, there will be a

carve-out to exempt the CIA from this prohibition. They are

seeking this with the express knowledge that sadists (acting under

the color of CIA authority) have been responsible for the horrific

abuses which made necessary further action and clarification of

existing law. This exemption would in fact turn the measure on

its head to AUTHORIZE torture by a particular agency,

diametrically contrary to the amendment's intent. They might as

well appoint a " Torture Czar " and make it a cabinet level

position.

 

Actually, for all practical purposes we already have a torture

czar . . . it's the Vice President of the United States, Dick

Cheney. Yes, it is Cheney himself who is PERSONALLY pressuring

the conference committee to rescind the McCain amendment in this

way (just as he was pressuring CIA analysts in the cooking of the

justification for war with Iraq). It has been Cheney himself who

has taken a lead role from the beginning, talking in 2002 about

the need to revive the " dark arts. " Since they could no longer

keep the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and elsewhere

classified, they have prosecuted a couple of selected patsies for

these crimes, while their agency handlers right up through the

chain of command have continued in their unconscionable ways.

 

This is not to let the president himself off the hook. In the

first place there is Bush's own overreaching lust for absolute

dictatorial power. Indeed, his longtime attorney and ally,

Alberto Gonzales, put his name on the infamous Jan 25, 2002 memo,

referring to the Geneva convention as " quaint. " But what many

people do not realize is that the heart of that reprehensible

legal pretzel job was drafted by David Addington, the staff

attorney closely associated with Dick Cheney. And would anybody

like to guess Mr. Addington's current title in the White House?

That's right. He just replaced the indicted " Scooter " Libby as

Cheney's Chief of Staff.

 

There isn't a " talking head " out there not drinking their own

" talking points Kool-Aid " who believes the Fitzgerald

investigation is remotely close to being finished. If anything,

the allegations in the Libby indictment, which identify Cheney as

the one who specifically advised Libby that Valerie (Plame) Wilson

worked under the covert wing of the CIA, suggest that the Vice

President is at least one of the big game that the Special Counsel

is still pursuing. The tight-lipped Fifth Amendment-type

reactions given by Cheney in the aftermath of the indictment to

explain his own role in the leak scandal do nothing to dispel the

intrigue. Instead the administration is circling the torture-

advocate wagons even tighter with the promotion of Addington,

while the shadow of Traitorgate continues to darken over their

heads.

 

Especially now, with the chickens of treason coming home to roost

in the nest of the chicken hawks themselves, this is the last time

in history for the authors of torture as official American policy

to be allowed to push for largesse for even wider atrocities. We

must all immediately contact our senators and members of the House

of Representatives who might have influence on the conference

committee to demand that the overwhelmingly approved language of

the McCain amendment remain intact in the final Defense

Appropriations Bill.

 

ACTION FORM: http://www.nocrony.com/no_torture.htm (McCain

Amendment)

 

We must also recognize that this is profoundly related to the

selection of a replacement for Harriet Miers as Supreme Court

nominee. Remember -- one of the talking points of the neocons

(before they turned on her for not being sufficiently and

demonstrably loyal to their causes) was that she would support the

president's policies in the deceptively dubbed " war on terror. "

But the universal common denominator of all Bush appointees is

their submissive endorsement of the unlimited expansion of the

president's power to do whatever he likes in defiance of Congress

and even the people themselves.

 

In his own confirmation hearing Roberts refused to say (among

other things) whether the Congress would have the power to stop a

war if the president ignored their authority. That case might

come before him, he argued, as if he knew something we didn't.

And it most certainly will if Bush is not stopped from making any

more such appointments. Roberts and his ilk will not legislate

from the bench (as if that were the boogie man to be feared). No,

instead they will UN-legislate from the bench, perhaps even to

remove the McCain language from American law by court order on the

grounds that it would interfere with the power of the president to

play God. Remember also that in his first day on the bench of the

high court Roberts left the sheep's clothing in his chambers to

ask aggressively why they should not overturn the TWICE-expressed

will of the people in the Oregon " Right to Die " case.

 

For all of these reasons we must demand that the next nominee to

the Supreme Court be a true moderate and a true nonpartisan. One

of the truly beautiful things about Special Counsel Patrick

Fitzgerald is that the American people can look at his work and

agree that it will be based entirely on the facts and the law.

Even opposing attorneys of those he has indicted must concede that

he is unwavering in his fairness and his integrity, favoring

neither side by any inherent bias. We can demand no less from the

next justice to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

 

ACTION FORM: http://www.nocrony.com/no_conservative.htm (Supreme

Court)

 

If we all speak out, we can remove the Vice President from his

position as the torture czar. It's not as if he doesn't have

enough other black hats to wear; he's already serving in the

capacity of treason czar as it is. Sheriff Fitzgerald is working

on that last one. The rest is up to we the people.

 

Forward this email to everyone you know, and encourage its

posting on blogs and websites.

 

originally posted by The Pen to