Obama reply

Senator Obama's reply to an email I sent regarding news last week about keeping the Guantanamo prisoners in small boxes/cells for extended lengths of time.


Dear L__:

Thank you for contacting me regarding this Administration's use of inhumane interrogation practices. I appreciate knowing of your concerns.

This issue has been the subject of heated legal debate for quite some time now. The United States is a nation born out of a struggle against tyranny, and our Constitution asserts that the rule of law applies to all men and women, and all branches and agencies of government. Time and again, America has triumphed because of the sharp contrast we draw to tyranny. In those battles, our allegiance to our values and the rule of law has been our greatest weapon.

Today, we are engaged in a new kind of battle. And the debate in which we have been engaged since September 11, 2001, is how we are going to respond to the shadowy, stateless, terrorist enemies of the 21st century. Tragically, the Bush Administration has too often chosen to respond to this enemy by abandoning our greatest weapon, by ignoring the values and laws that it deems inconvenient. Violating international treaties we ratified and U.S. laws that protect us, the Bush Administration has used excessive secrecy, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and "enhanced interrogation techniques" like simulated drowning that qualify as torture under any reasonable reading of the law. For a nation with a history marked by the torture of hundreds of American soldiers in Vietnamese prisons, it is troubling to think that any lawmaker views the practice of torture as effective or justified.

When the Senate conducted debate on the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for FY 2006, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who endured years of torture as a POW during the Vietnam War, offered an amendment to the bill that requires all military interrogations to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual’s standards for humane treatment and prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of any prisoner detained by the U.S. You may be interested to know that the Army Field Manual 34-52, Chapter 1, explicitly states:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the U.S. Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation . . . as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. . . . it also may place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk.

We know that torture does not work. We know that torture violates our laws. And we know that when we detain suspects without trial or ship them off in the dead of night to countries where we know they’ll be tortured, we compromise our own security and weaken our ability to press for human rights and the rule of law in despotic regimes. On this issue, former Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded: “Torture is torture is torture. It is unacceptable. It is not the way you treat human beings.”

I was proud to vote for Senator McCain’s amendment, which passed by a vote of 90-9 with clear support from both political parties. I am also a proud co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to restore habeas corpus rights, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 (S. 185). In light of the CIA’s confirmation that videotapes depicting brutal interrogation techniques were destroyed, I was heartened that the House and Senate passed the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill and included a requirement that subjects CIA interrogators to the same guidelines included in the Army Field Manual. However, the President vetoed this legislation on March 8, and unfortunately the House failed to gather enough votes for a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

As you may know, on June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the habeas rights of the remaining detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This recent decision is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. I commend the Court's decision, and will continue to advocate for oversight and inquiry into the Administration's detainee policy to ensure that the very values we are fighting to defend are protected and upheld.

L__, thank you again for writing. I hope you will stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator