TV Ad Opposing Mr. Torture

MoveOn and some Peace Action affiliates are airing this ad in venues across the U.S. in time for the Senate vote.

View a version of the ad

ACTION:

Reject the Secretary of Torture

President Bush has appointed Alberto Gonzales to replace John Aschroft to the head of the Department of Justice as Attorney General. Gonzales has served as the White House Counsel, where he wrote a series of infamous memos that were used to justify the administration's policies of detention and torture in the Bush/Cheney /Rumsfeld/Ashcroft war on terror. The most telling of the memos referred to the Geneva Convention's prohibitions against torture to be "quaint" and "obsolete."

Gonzales helped set policies that led to torture and gross human rights abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, at Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan. These policies make America and Americans less safe.

For his extensive work in the area of the rationalization of torture by the executive branch, we have come to calling him the Secretary of Torture.

Gonzales' blatant disregard for the rule of law and contempt for the Constitution demand that he be rejected for the position of Attorney General.

Write your newspaper, call your senator and demonstrate against Alberto Gonzales. If your Senator is a Democrat, ask her or him to filibuster the Gonzales nomination.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will likely not hold hearings on Gonzales' nomination until early next year, but it's not too early to urge them to ask tough questions and vote to reject Gonzales.

Following is the current make-up of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Changes are expected next year with the convening of the next Congress. Arlen Specter is expected to be the new chair of the committee.

Republican Judiciary Committee members:

Orrin Hatch, UT, Chair
Charles Grassley, IA
Arlen Specter, PA
Jon Kyl, AZ
Mike DeWine, OH
Jeff Sessions, AL
Lindsey Graham, SC
Larry Craig, ID
Saxby Chambliss, GA
John Cornyn, TX

Democratic Judiciary Committee members:

Patrick J. Leahy, VT, Ranking Member
Edward M. Kennedy, MA
Joseph R. Biden, Jr., DE
Herbert H. Kohl, WI
Dianne Feinstein, CA
Russ Feingold, WI
Charles E. Schumer, NY
Richard J. Durbin, IL
John R. Edwards, NC

Contact your Senator via the Congressional switchboard: 202.224.3121 or via email, which you can do via http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Talking Points:

* The January 2002 memorandum that Gonzales wrote not only undermined the Geneva Conventions, but went as far as redefining permissible torture as anything short of organ failure, death, or permanent psychological damage. It is this memorandum that led the way to the prison scandals at Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan.

* Mr. Gonzales fought to keep secret the details of Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 meetings with oil, gas and nuclear concerns as part of his revamping of U.S. energy policy.

* During Bush's term as Texas governor, Gonzales repeatedly suppressed crucial death penalty case facts that Bush should have considered in determining whether to grant clemency, such as "ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." He denied Pope John Paul II's clemency request for Karla Faye Tucker in 1998, and failed to enlist a mental health expert on the behalf of mentally retarded Terry Washington, as he was entitled to by the Supreme Court. Clearly. Gonzales is not qualified to run our federal Justice Department.

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