Today, I am sad and disheartened.  The myth of the United States being a beacon of hope and peace for the poor and oppressed of the world can no longer be sustained.  I have taken careful note of the ability of most Americans to avoid admitting their fundamental love and approval for government sanctioned murder and torture.  I am growing increasingly convinced that U.S. special interests require torture to achieve their ends, and that these interests have lobbied both the Congress and the Senate directly to prevent any serious inquiries into murder, assassination squads and government involvement in destruction of international treaties and human rights norms.  Some evidence:

1) I sent the following message to my representative Tammy Baldwin, and Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold on June 30, 2009 at 10:30pm:

I today read information that is shocking and sickening to my conscience. The June 22nd edition of The New Yorker Magazine (Jane Mayer is the author) has reported that the Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. A forensic examiner found that the prisoner died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms in a hood, and suffered broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide. Mayer notes that no CIA personnel have been criminally charged.

Further, recently released Justice memos contain numerous references to CIA medical personnel participating in coercive interrogation sessions.

I’m not sure what to do with this information. I am passing this on to you today to bring the issue of the United States role in torture to your attention again. I know that you have spoken out against this in the past, but I think we need a truth and reconciliation commission in place immediately so that Americans can face this and work through the implications of such behavior done in our name. Suppression of such information will only lead to further horrors executed in the name of securing our liberty. My conscience can not support any government that sanctions and indirectly supports such atrocities.

I think I would like to hear a plan from you for confronting and publicly working through this information, so that such horrors can be prevented in the future, and so those responsible are held accountable. I’m writing with great sadness today. Please let me know your thoughts about this.

Sincerely,
Matthew Carlson

Here is Rep. Baldwin’s response.  I received this at 9:30am on July 1st!  She “apologizes” for not getting this to me sooner!  How would that have been possible?  In any case, note that it is a form letter:

Dear Mr. Carlson:

Thank you for contacting me about the duty of Congress to hold the executive branch accountable. It is good to hear from you and I apologize for the delay in my response.

Over the past several years, serious questions were raised about the conduct of high ranking Bush/Cheney Administration officials in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The list of abuses of executive branch power was long, as were the Bush/Cheney Administration’s attempts to impede congressional oversight.

Like you, I believe that unchecked executive power invites abuse. I fully support efforts that hold the executive branch accountable to the Constitution and ensure that abuse of executive power does not occur again. On April 16, 2009, the United States Department of Justice released memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005, detailing techniques used for the interrogation of terrorism subjects. The gruesome details in these memos indicate that more needs to be done to declare that no American-even the President and the Vice President of the United States-is above the law.

You may be pleased to know that on May 8, 2009, I reintroduced the Executive Branch Accountability Act, H. Res. 417, calling on President Obama to reverse the damaging and illegal actions taken by the Bush/Cheney Administration and to collaborate with Congress to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power. Specifically, the bill directs the President to:

w Fully investigate Bush/Cheney administration officials’ alleged crimes and hold them accountable for any illegal acts;
w Affirm that it is the sole legal right of Congress to declare war;
w Restore the writ of habeas corpus as an essential principle of our democracy; and
w Ensure that torture and rendition are uniformly prohibited under United States law.
Please know that I will keep your views in mind as I continue to press for expanded oversight of the executive branch by Congress.
Again, thank you for sharing your views.  Your opinion matters to me.  If I can be of service to you in any other way, please do not hesitate to let me know.  As a security precaution, all mail sent to Congress is first irradiated.  This process causes significant delays.  To ensure the fastest response, I encourage all constituents who have access to the internet to contact me through my website at http://tammybaldwin.house.gov.

Sincerely,
Tammy Baldwin
Member of Congress

So…it took my House member staff about an hour to get this back to me (given that her office likely opens around 8am).  Just yesterday, I received the following from the office of Senator Russ Feingold (Senators, being more important, take more than a month to reply):

Dear Mr. Carlson,
Thank you for contacting me with your views on President Bush and his administration.  I appreciate hearing from you.
It is important that we learn the full extent of the wrongdoing of the Bush Administration. As President Obama and Attorney General Holder have said, nobody is above the law.  There needs to be accountability for wrongdoing by the Bush Administration, including the illegal warrantless wiretapping and interrogation programs.  I agree with you that we cannot simply sweep these assaults on the rule of law under the rug.
President Obama has stated that it is not his administration’s intention to prosecute those who acted reasonably and relied in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice.  I have urged the President not to rule out investigations or prosecutions of those who authorized torture, or provided the legal justification for it.  Horrible abuses were committed in the name of the American people, and we cannot look the other way. The final decision is up to the attorney general and the president, but I am hopeful that the Justice Department will take this matter very seriously.
I am pleased that President Obama chose to release memos produced by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that approved the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogation program, and I agree with OLC’s action to officially withdraw these memos. More recently, news reports have indicated that the Attorney General is considering appointing a prosecutor to investigate individuals who may have gone beyond the legal authorization for that program provided by the OLC. I sent a letter to the Attorney General on July 14, 2009, about this issue.  I have enclosed a copy of that letter for your review.
I thought you might also be interested to know that in September 2008, I chaired a hearing in the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution entitled “Restoring the Rule of Law.” During the hearing, the Subcommittee heard testimony from legal experts and historians on what steps the president and Congress must take to repair the damage done by the Bush administration. The hearing was an effort to come up with a full range of recommendations for reestablishing appropriate checks and balances in a variety of areas, including wiretapping, interrogations, detention policy, executive privilege, government secrecy, privacy protections and Congressional oversight.
In addition to the testimony of the witnesses at the hearing, I solicited input from a number of other law professors, historians, advocates and other experts to help craft a blueprint for restoring the rule of law for the president and Congress. All of the testimony is available for your review on my website at http://feingold.senate.gov/ruleoflaw/. There are also links there to my opening statement at the hearing, and to a speech I delivered on the Senate floor.
On December 10, 2008, I sent a letter to then President-elect Obama outlining specific executive branch actions that I hope he and his administration will take to begin the process of restoring the rule of law.  I have also enclosed a copy of that letter for your review.

Thank you again for contacting me. I look forward to hearing from you again.

Here’s the letter Senator Feingold sent to the Attorney General:
Holder investigation letter 7-14-09

Well, this is all fine I suppose. I appreciate that my representatives in Washington are doing _something_ to address these horrors. However, consider the following: The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Attorney General Holder is planning an inquiry that will be narrow in scope. The investigation, which would focus solely on CIA crimes, would examine “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in memos issued by Bush administration lawyers.

Narrow in scope. Limited. Meaningless and purposeless. Investigating whether people went “beyond” illegally authorized crimes. Torture, crucifixion and murder met with lame excuses and never ending attempts to sweep this under the rug. None held accountable. Not one doctor, not one CIA official, not one Bush Administration official confronted about war crimes and crimes against humanity. This “investigation” has been approved at the highest levels in the Obama administration. The investigation is limited in scope specifically because the government wishes to retain the privilege to torture in the future.   You see, the 100 waterboardings a month authorized by the previous administration for one detainee were done relying on “good faith” in the judgments of the DOJ. If slamming a prisoner’s head against a wall is found to conform to the “law” as interpreted by the DOJ, then none need call it torture.

Authorizing a thorough investigation would hold complicit actors currently involved in covert torture of prisoners. Our government officials are being paid now to let these horrors continue. As if endless war, domestic spying, murder of innocents was not enough….now I have to pay for the destruction of the previously noble U.S. standard of justice (whether this is reality or not is irrelevant to my point). We are all paying for this through our taxes. This is why I am convinced that Americans love torture. They continue to pay for it with no outcry.   They work to further it.  I’m disgusted, terrified and saddened for my people.

One final thought…note the irony of a nation filled with Christians paying for the crucifixion of a prisoner of war!