worth a shot, I guess -- know any progressive Jews?

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

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http://www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?option=begin&pageid=5871&tmode=0

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?option=begin&pageid=5871&tmode=0

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?option=begin&pageid=5871&tmode=0

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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