A possibly HUGE DEVELOPMENT on Alberto Gonzales

RaulVB

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Sat Jan-29-05 03:00 AM
Original message

A possibly HUGE DEVELOPMENT on Alberto Gonzales

Edited on Sat Jan-29-05 03:19 AM by RaulVB

And an activism alert based on an email that "feelthebreeze" posted earlier.

ALBERTO GONZALES WAS IN THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY ON 1976. Tonight, I listened to a caller on the "Randi Rhodes Show" (AAR) who claimed this:

He was on the Air Force academy with Gonzales and he (Gonzales) was a a training sergeant. Nothin weird but, then the caller said that "GONZALES WAS PART OF A SPECIAL PROGRAM DESIGNED TO PREPARE AIR FORCE CADETS IF THEY WERE TO BE CAPTURED BY THE ENEMY AND TORTURED."

Sergeant Gonzales, apparently was trained in the use of very particular torture methods, ALMOST EXACTLY the same methods described by him as "OK" and AUTHORIZED BY HIM TO BE USED WITH THE PRISONERS CURRENTLY IN AMERICAN MILITARY CAMPS AROUND THE WORLD!.

Please, write, contact your Senators and tell them to vote NO in the Gonzales nomination of AG.

"Feelthebreeze" posted email says:

"==================================================

URGENT ALERT: Torture Issue: Our calls might turn Senate around

==================================================

http://www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?op...

Dear Friends,

I met yesterday with a couple of people in Washington who have been
working with religious and
human rights organizations on the issue of torture, and its bearing
on whether the Senate should
confirm Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General.

As things stand, there will be a day of floor debate next week and
the vote of the Senate as a whole
will come on Thursday NEXT WEEK. So action is URGENTLY needed.

The Washington folks (and I) were greatly encouraged by the 10-8 vote
of the Senate Judiciary
Committee in favor of confirming Mr. Gonzales. We were encouraged
because when the President
first nominated Mr. Gonzales, it looked as if there might be no No
votes at all. Just a few weeks
ago, when the hearings began, it looked as if there would just three
Noes. Getting a floor debate is
itself a big victory; originally the Administration's hope was a
speedy, costless OK.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chair of the Judiciary Committee,
voted for the nomination
despite the visit by and earnest discussion he had with eight
Philadelphia rabbis, and a letter from
21 Philadelphia rabbis. Had he voted No, the committee would have
been tied and no
recommendation would have come from it to the Senate.

Senator Specter's Yes was an unfortunate and saddening abdication of
his own role as guardian of
the law and the Constitution, in favor of partisan considerations of
backing the President.

Yet there is still a chance, I was told, to give Senator Specter an
out for moving in a new direction -
and not only him, but a number of other Republican Senators (not just
the so-called "moderates")
who are very uneasy about Mr. Gonzales' views.

That out is insisting that Mr. Gonzales' nomination not be voted on
by the Senate but returned to
Committee until crucial documents are supplied to the Senate about
how he decided to recommend
to the President that he has the authority to abandon the rule of
law, annul the Geneva Conventions,
shield lawbreakers from prosecution, and authorize the use of torture
by US forces and even worse,
the "rendition" of US prisoners to other countries known to use the
most brutal conceivable forms
of torture.

Those documents are necessary to make an objective, not partisan,
decision, about Mr. Gonzales.

So I urge that we all do ONE of the following:

1) Call Senator Specter's office in Washington at 202/224-4254
and urge him to vote to return
the Gonzales nomination to the Judiciary Committee until those
documents behind the pro-torture,
pro-unconstitutional expansion of Presidential power are supplied to
the Committee;

OR

2) FAX or Email Senator Specter at 202/228-1229 or
arlen_specter@specter.senate.gov your
own letter expressing your sadness that he voted to confirm Mr.
Gonzales and urging that he vote to
return the nomination to Committee until these crucial documents can
be secured from the
Administration.
Click here:
http://www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?op...

OR

3) Call or write your own Senator to urge him or her to oppose
confirming Mr. Gonzales and
insist that this crucial information be made available to the Senate.
You can call 202/ 224-3121 and
ask for your own Senator, or click here:
http://www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?op...

If your Senator is a Democrat, urge an outright vote to reject Mr.
Gonzales' nomination. If your
Senator is a Republican, tangled in party politics, urge s/he demand
the documents and hold up the
nomination till they are produced.

We are offering brief model letters you can modify to make your own.
We also suggest drawing on
a powerful letter that Rabbis for Human Rights/ North America has
sent every Senator, drawing on
Jewish teachings. It is now the lead story on our Website Click here:

http://www.shalomctr.org

Two questions that people have raised: --

First: Shouldn't we avoid focusing on a person and focus on the issue
of torture instead? Isn't
focusing on a person partisan? Wasn't the vote by eight Democrats
against the nomination a
partisan act?

Two answers:

a) The specific people who make up a government matter. Remember
the furor in 1999 over
whether the far-right Austrian politician Joerg Haider should be
invited to join the Austrian
cabinet? The government of Israel threatened to cut diplomatic ties
with Austria if Mr Haider
joined the cabinet, and the European Union threatened sanctions
against Austria. Abstract
opposition to anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism was of course not enough.
The person mattered. Here
also.

b) If the Democrats had been responding out of partisanship, they
would have voted to confirm
Mr. Gonzales because they have been anxiously courting the Hispanic
vote. It is those Senators
who suppressed their own qualms to vote FOR the nomination in order
to support their party's
President who were voting for partisan reasons.

Second question: Why take on what is sure to be a losing battle?

Also two answers:

a) It's no longer so certain (though still probable) that it will
be a losing battle. Already we have
won much more than seemed possible a few weeks ago: eight No votes in
Committee, and a
reluctant agreement by the Senate leadership to a real debate about
Mr. Gonzales that will be the
first Congressional debate about torture.

b) Even if we cannot totally derail the nomination, we can build
support for the future, just as the
religious right spent years campaigning around their issues, only to
be defeated time after time --
building their defeats into a long-range mass movement.

Religious and spiritual communities ought to be especially able to
stand firm for what is right, even
when defeated. Think of the histories of Judaism, Christianity,
Islam. Think of the history of
abolitionism, Black struggles in the South, the struggles of women
for equality.

The Roman general Pyrrhus said after a bloody victory in battle, "One
more such victory, and I am
undone!" Such "triumphs" became known as "Pyrrhic victories." I am
suggesting we should with
care and courage be taking on issues that are profoundly in touch
with the Spirit - like the abolition
of torture. We should accept momentary "Pyrrhic defeats"; and we
should say, "One more, two
more, ten more such defeats, and we will transform our country to the good!"

Aside from the original memo, has Gonzales done anything wrong? His
responses to Judiciary
Committee questions about the actuality of torture were evasive, full
of "I don't remember" in
regard to a very important and unprecedented memo he gave the
President (a surprising thing to
forget) and in regard to memos he received about torture from lawyers
in the Justice Department.

And in the hearings he explicitly repeated the Bush Administration's
assertion that the Geneva
Conventions do not apply to people the Administration unilaterally
labels "enemy combatants"
rather than POW's

Even worse, he has not been willing to repudiate the definition of
torture that was so extreme that
most forms of torture would be permitted.

The torture carried out by US soldiers was not only at Abu Ghraib but
also at Guantanamo, in
Afghanistan, and in many Iraqi locations - plus foreign prisons to
which the US has "rendered"
prisoners for the worst forms of torture. And the methods used were
not "only" the humiliations we
saw at Abu Ghraib, but beatings to death, near drownings (repeated on
the same prisoners again
and again), inserting burning matches into prisoners' ears, and the
use of electric shock.

FBI agents who witnessed what was happening at Guantanamo were
horrified, and called it illegal.
So did the International Red Cross.

Enough. No one who was willing to permit all this is worthy to become Attorney
General. PLEASE SAY SO.

Shalom, Arthur

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* I hope I'm not violating any of the forum's rules concerning the length of a post.

Thanks!