CIA torture
I sent the following email to my congressman today. These are my own words, not those of a form letter.
I would like to call your attention to the op-ed "I am not a state secret" by Khaled El-Masri in the March 3, 2007 edition of the LA Times. Mr El-Masri is the German citizen who was mistakenly captured and tortured for months by the CIA in 2003.
Mr. El-Masri's story turns my stomach. He wasn't the victim of the military dictator of some third-world banana republic, this was official American government policy! And now the Bush administration has succeeded in hiding its crimes -- and its incompetence at pursuing real terrorists -- behind a wall of legalistic "national security" claims.
I cannot express my anger, sadness and shame at watching my own country, once a beacon for the whole world of justice and human rights, stoop to such barbarism. And even the courts don't seem to care.
So Germany, once home to the most horrible regime in history, has to prosecute the CIA agents who deprived Mr. El-Masri of his fundamental rights as a human being. Germany accepts these rights because an earlier generation of Americans helped establish them during the trials of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. The irony is overwhelming.
I am frightened. Our system of checks and balances is breaking down. But they're not gone yet. As a member of Congress, you have the power and the duty to investigate the Administration in this and countless similar cases at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere. You must make it clear that no one, not even the President, can ignore laws, treaties and the Constitution and hide his criminal behavior behind cynical claims of "national security".
I would like to call your attention to the op-ed "I am not a state secret" by Khaled El-Masri in the March 3, 2007 edition of the LA Times. Mr El-Masri is the German citizen who was mistakenly captured and tortured for months by the CIA in 2003.
Mr. El-Masri's story turns my stomach. He wasn't the victim of the military dictator of some third-world banana republic, this was official American government policy! And now the Bush administration has succeeded in hiding its crimes -- and its incompetence at pursuing real terrorists -- behind a wall of legalistic "national security" claims.
I cannot express my anger, sadness and shame at watching my own country, once a beacon for the whole world of justice and human rights, stoop to such barbarism. And even the courts don't seem to care.
So Germany, once home to the most horrible regime in history, has to prosecute the CIA agents who deprived Mr. El-Masri of his fundamental rights as a human being. Germany accepts these rights because an earlier generation of Americans helped establish them during the trials of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. The irony is overwhelming.
I am frightened. Our system of checks and balances is breaking down. But they're not gone yet. As a member of Congress, you have the power and the duty to investigate the Administration in this and countless similar cases at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere. You must make it clear that no one, not even the President, can ignore laws, treaties and the Constitution and hide his criminal behavior behind cynical claims of "national security".