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

Anthrax & rush to war

2 posts to remember this week how messed up the 2 investigations into the Anthrax killer and "Rush to War". I want to save these links to look back on, hopefully one day when we have the full story. It all seems so 'keystone kops' to me. Why does it seem like they want to frame people instead of just finding the truth about what really happened. Aargh.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/05/anthrax/index.html
Glenn Greenwald
" One glaring and important exception to the dynamic of uncritical media recitation is this morning's New York Times article by Scott Shane and Nicholas Wade, which evinces very strong skepticism over the FBI's case thus far and discloses facts that create more grounds for skepticism. Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims. "

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/08/06/suskind/
"Forging the missing case for war
In further chronicles of Bush government deceit, author Ron Suskind drops a bombshell: The White House ordered the CIA to fake a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida."

Food & Politics

Sorry I've been away from you too long dear Blog. I read this today and want to read it again and savor the meaning(s). I agree food is political. I eat that way and feel guilty when I don't. But it shouldn't have to be so complicated. Great topic to explore.

Daniel Larison:

To say that eating is a political act worries conservatives because many seem to cling, oddly enough, to an old liberal conception of private, personal life that they wish to preserve free from outside interference, including ultimately the "interference" of neighbors, relatives and local community. Where social conservatives are often keenly aware of the effects that individual choices concerning marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing have on society as a whole, there often seems to be a strange disconnect when it comes to eating, as if an act that ties us into an elaborate web of economic relationships has no greater significance and no other implications other than providing nourishment. It is one kind of activity, perhaps the only kind, where many conservatives act as if the consequences of personal choices do not extend beyond the front door.

At the same time, eating as a political act is nonetheless also a question of how we are governed, whom we choose to empower and how we choose to govern ourselves.

Also this in the Trib today, about methane from beef production. I'm getting there, I may not be a veggie, but I'm definitely cutting back! AND I have my own garden now. Baby steps....

Defense Contractors Theft & Extortion

My email to Roskam:

I would like to note that as a taxpayer I am fed up with US government contractors getting away with:

HIGHWAY ROBBERY ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213707612-4zVo371AEaukpimfCOaPHA&pagewanted=all)

, .... not to mention RAPE
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/houppert ( Dawn Leamon was raped by a KBR employee -btw, she is from Illinois)

, pillage and MURDER in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html

Please, please support our troops by ensuring that they are given the resources to do the job _AND_Bring them home. KBR is extorting them/us for money and their safety, all the while being paid so much more than our own troops to do their job. The armed forces have lost all control to the military-industrial complex. This is sickening - it has to end. THis is payola for VP Cheney and his pals. No wonder they want to stay for 100 years -they have no accountability!! At least hold them accountable to earn our untold billions. STOP this crazyness.

With all sincerety,

L_Z_

unlawful imprisonment

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that ....dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

Amen & Hallelujah

Habeus survives :

"To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on and off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say "what the law is... Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers ... Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person."


NY TIMES link

5 words

" Outrage fatigue musn't cause complacency " (HuffPo)

ditto.

Yesterday

Yesterday was the lowest of lows ( ok not THE lowest but you know what I mean) and a pretty good gratifying " high" .

(1) I got laid off yesterday from my job. Aargh and angst, more on that later....

(2) Obama cinched the dem nomination last night. That makes me very happy. Its something I've been waiting for for a long time.

Media Pentagon WH relationship

I guess I should have been reading the McClatchy paper all along .... ht Glenn Greenwald at Salon

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?
Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others - was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House's case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/ save this link

BEST. TV. SHOW. EV. ER.

Very great show last night - the end of season 4. I started crying when Sawyer jumped out of the helicopter. I can't wait to find out what happens next....

Ackerman woods in Glen Ellyn

Glen Ellyn in the news (local Fox station video here)


Daily Herald: Despite the roughly 100 Glen Ellyn residents that expressed their discontent with the village and park district's plan to cut down 340 trees for a flood control project, the plan is expected to go forward.

Glen Ellyn leaders will move forward with a flood control project at Ackerman Park that entails cutting down 340 trees, despite much outcry from residents opposed to the project.

Bad bad bad decision. I sent an email yesterday to the Park District & local paper's letter to the editors. I'm already drafting another one email to the GE Park District... I think they are really going to come to regret this.


Background here

Why not an airlift for Burma?

This article was interesting and helped answer a question I had about it myself... why not just drop food in an airlift?

" Oxfam and other agencies have well-trained disaster specialists ready and waiting to go. The Burmese authorities must allow them in to do their job. However until that happens, calls for air drops must be resisted. They will make good television and fulfil the need to do something - anything - to help relieve the suffering in Burma.
But air drops are expensive, inefficient and not the best way to help desperate people on the ground. "

But the comments at the bottom of the link offer a lot of good contrarian reasons to do SOMETHING.

Myanmar / Burma: disaster x disaster

Help is needed! and it appears its not getting through. Just sent this Amnesty form email and also printed out a letter to mail there... but by the time they get it -it will probably be TOO late.
This "junta" government or whatever you want to call it is EVIL.

While Snr-Gen Than Shwe and the top generals selectively pick and choose what aid to accept from foreign nations, they are stalling on issuing visas to the UN and other international aid workers.

The UN said the junta’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country was "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work, even as survivors of a devastating cyclone waited for food, shelter and medicine. Observers said Than Shwe is making all the major decisions about foreign aid workers. Eric John, the US ambassador to Thailand, said that if the junta delays visa application to aid workers one more day, more people will die.

I sent an email also earlier today to my former colleague Allan M. who is Burmese. He lives in San Francisco. I hope his family is OK. What a tragedy!

neocons and Iran

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
scary,... note to self:" pay attention this time "

"The neoconservative war-lovers behind this effort have not changed, nor have their tactics. They realize, as many of them acknowledge, that they will have four more years in power if John McCain is elected. But they also realize that he may not be, and that their last hope for their long-desired attack on Iran lies in convincing the current administration to provoke one before its tenure ends. As much as one wishes it weren't true, as much as the fixation on petty election issues might obscure it, the truly depraved extremist group that brought us the invasion of Iraq still exerts substantial influence and is quite busy trying to exert it."
.....
"And now, magically up pops these new reports from Israel warning that the deadline to stop Iran's nuclear bomb is the end of the year -- right before George Bush leaves office. Bush has less than eight months left to fulfill his history-mandated mission "to prevent another holocaust" by attacking Iran, or else "be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb." They're as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty."

Medical Review for Organ Transplant

so sad... this shouldn't have happened....

"SEATTLE -- A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday."

First, there should be more donors so people on the waiting list don't die unnecessarily, 2nd, the medical review team nixed his transplant even when using the pain-killing drug (in WA state) is legal! That just doesn't make sense.