Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog's ongoing letter writing campaign for torture accountability. For those who have not been following this series how it works is as follows: every Monday the Dog writes a letter to decision makers urging accountability for the Bush Administrations State Sponsored Torture program. The Dog also provides the links to contact the decision makers. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to either use the letter as a jumping off point or to cut and paste it (adding your name) and send it off. The whole point of this campaign is to keep the issue of accountability for torture alive until we get the action the Rule of Law requires.
This week we will be writing Attorney General Eric Holder. Recent reports have shown he is leaning the right direction, so we need to keep letting him know that criminal investigations and prosecutions where evidence is strong enough are required by our system of justice.
Dear AG Holder;
I write you today as a citizen of our nation who is very concerned with the need for accountability for those who broke both the Federal statutes and the International Conventions Against Torture in the name of national security.
I have followed the developments on this issue very carefully and it is fairly obvious there is reason to, at the very least, open criminal investigations into the waterboarding of three US detainees which the CIA Inspector General's 2004 report has confirmed went far beyond the advice provided by the Office of Legal Council memo's commonly called "The Torture Memo's". I have always doubted the ability of memo's such as these to shield flatly illegal activities from investigation and prosecution, but since it is clear the spurious advice that was given was far exceeded no protection can be provided by them in any case.
AG Holder, you will be doing the right thing if you do open investigations into these abuses. You are the chief law enforcement officer of our nation, and your allegiance must be to the Law first and any political concerns second. We have just come out from under what can only be described as a lawless Administration and the people of the United States and the world are wondering if the US will return to the principal of rule of law or not. You and your Department starting an investigation of torture, and the 8 deaths during interrogation which were referred to the DOJ in the 2004 CIA Inspector Generals report for criminal prosecution is a very good way to start.
You will receive a lot of political pressure to let sleeping dogs lie on this issue, but that would be the very worst thing you could do. We have seen the damage a politicized DOJ can do to our Republic. Please do not allow that damage to continue.
AG Holder, you know the right thing to do from the stand point of the law, all I ask is that you follow the law and allow an investigation to follow it too.
Regards,
CC
President Obama
Speaker Pelosi
Majority Leader Reid
Judiciary Chair Leahy
Judiciary Chair Conyers
Now it is up to you citizens. The Dog knows there are those who have fallen off on sending these letters as it looked less and less likely we would get action. Now that we know this is not true, please take the time to write. One housekeeping note, you will need to put the ASKDOJ@usdoj.gov in your browser to be taken to where you can write the AG.
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