Tell Your Senators: Don't Let the White House Legalize Torture E action

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=21387&afccode=n73jnb

Click the link to act.

Tell Your Senators: Don't Let the White House Legalize Torture

Contributed by Working Assets

The White House is currently pushing for a law to allow torture of detainees in the "war on terror" -- a law that would violate the Geneva Conventions and contradict our United States Constitution. The White House legislation would allow the use of coerced testimony in military tribunals (even though that information is not reliable), allow evidence to be withheld from defendants in terrorism trials, and severely restrict the fundamental right of habeas corpus. It even brazenly seeks to protect Administration officials and interrogators from future prosecution by applying the new rules retroactively to 2001.

In contrast, Senators Graham, McCain and Warner have recently defied the White House and helped pass different legislation out of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- legislation that the President has vowed to block. Their legislation would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

At stake in this standoff between the President and the Senate are legal and moral issues central to the Constitution and the character of the American people: the right to a fair trial, the use of torture, and the accountability of high government officials for war crimes. It's vitally important that this administration not be allowed to wipe out our constitutional freedoms and protections under the guise of protecting us from terrorism. The Graham-Warner-McCain legislation has very significant flaws -- but is a great deal better than the Administration's proposal.

Call to action:
Tell your Senators to block any legislation governing the treatment of detainees that does not follow and improve upon the principles laid out in the Graham-Warner-McCain proposal passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Deadline:
immediate

Additional Information:
We urge you to personalize the letter and express your views in your own words; your letter will have a much greater effect that way.

[bullimiami]

1. If we have to TELL THEM that torture is wrong

they are not fit for office.

Im sorry but ANYONE who votes to allow torture is dead to me.

[OregonBlue]

2. Unless the legislation contains a provision re: signing statements

it is meaningless. There has to be a clause that states that any signing statement by the president will make the legistlation null and void and that it will have to be renegotiated by the House and Senate, or it will be business as usual.

[babylonsister]

3. Done, and thanks. nt