A Call for Congress to Take Action on Torture
October 28th, 2009

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Whereas over seven years have passed since President George W. Bush fraudulently induced the U.S. congress, the American people, and the world into the illegal war in Iraq,

Whereas it is nearly five years since Specialist Darby revealed the photos of Abu Ghraib that showed us torture being committed by our government in our name,

Whereas further evidence of torture remains secret and has been hidden from the public, courts, and Congress to insulate the perpetrators from appropriate criminal liability,

Whereas over the past years we have campaigned about the illegality of this war and the need to prosecute the high-level civilian and military officials who put in place the torture,

On October 13, 2009, David Swanson discussed his new book "Daybreak" and US politics and took questions from students at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL. Video shot by Leonard Schmiege, candidate for St. Petersburg City Council.

More below!

David Swanson Plenary Santa Fe 10-10-09 from Gregory W Dugay on Vimeo.

Listen here: http://www.whus.org

Watch for podcast to be posted later today if you miss the original.

Dick Cheney may be out of government, but not by much. He lives nextdoor to the CIA at 1126 Chain Bridge Road, McLean, Va. Here's a map: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/39703

Please join a camp on Cheney's lawn this Friday, Sunday and Tuesday, October 2, 4, 6th. The Justice Department has failed thus far to indict this man who has confessed on television to authorizing torture and promoting and threatening aggressive war, and whose interview with the FBI on his outing of a CIA agent's identity as retribution for the debunking of war lies has just been ordered released by a court of law.

Bring your fishing poles to camp for some catch and release, and maybe even catch and indict. Contact: Cynthia Papermaster cynthia_papermaster@yahoo.com

Go HERE and click on Season 20, Episode 1, "Memo from the Dark Side." You can then watch it on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, or iReel. Spread the word. Host a house party. Think about making this happen for real.

By David Swanson

Of course, I'm going to argue no, that Andrew Sullivan is no more the king of America than is Barack Obama or George Tenet or Eric Holder or any of hundreds of other people claiming to be. But nobody other than the king or queen of the USA could overrule the Constitution and place particular people and categories of people above the law while keeping everybody else under it. Let's take a look at Sullivan's recent Atlantic article:

Americans want, and need, to move on from the debate over torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and close this tragic chapter in our nation’s history. Prosecuting those responsible could tear apart a country at war. Instead, the best way to confront the crimes of the past is for the man who authorized them to take full responsibility. An open letter to President George W. Bush.

By Andrew Sullivan

Dear President Bush,

Please read this excerpt of my new book published at Alternet.

By Dave Lindorff

The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.

The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks,
his General William Westmoreland, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, will be
coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in
Iraq too.

His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.

Pressure is mounting for an honest probe into the criminality of the
prior administration in its authorization and promotion of torture
against captives--most of them innocent--in the Bush/Cheney "war" on
terror.

By David Swanson
(with image by Michael Parenti)

Attorney General Eric Holder is addressing a war crime without addressing the wars, and is focusing on the lowest ranking participants in that crime without addressing its status as official policy established by higher ups and openly confessed to by a former president and vice president. This is bad applism, the same approach that has held a handful of recruits responsible for Abu Ghraib, claiming to thereby remove bad apples from a good system. But Congress' and the public's approach to the horrors of the past eight years is driven by our own bad applism, by our belief that the departure of Bush and Cheney in itself significantly repaired a system of government that is rotten to the core.