Torture Is Not Quaint.
Act with the Center for Constitutional Rights
To Oppose the Gonzales Nomination!

Dear friends and supporters,

This is the week to make your voice heard! Confirmation hearings on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General begin Wednesday, January 5. If you haven't already contacted your representatives, click here to send a letter (or paste http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert into your browser).

Two weeks ago, we called on people to oppose the nomination of one of the chief architects of this Administration's lawless torture policy to the highest law enforcement office in the land. Last Thursday night, right before New Year's Eve, the government quietly posted a new torture memo that repudiated the memos Gonzales wrote and commissioned as White House Counsel and omitted his most radical recommendations: even they don't think his legal opinions on these crucial questions stand up to scrutiny.

Please take a minute to send a letter to your representatives urging them to do more than ask difficult questions. Ask them to stand up and oppose the Gonzales nomination. The time to start fighting is now.

And please forward this widely and quickly!

Sincerely yours,

Ron Daniels
Executive Director
Center for Constitutional Rights

P.S. We appreciate your help in our efforts to hold this Administration accountable for its extremist actions and policies. If you do not wish to receive emails from CCR in the future, please respond to this email with "remove from list" in the subject line. And if you would like to learn more about the important work CCR does on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, corporate accountability and more, please visit our website: www.ccr-ny.org.

Tough Questions Are Not Enough

In their scathing editorial on the nomination, The Washington Post linked Alberto Gonzales directly to the torture at Abu Ghraib and called his legal positions "damaging and erroneous." Newsweek wrote that "Gonzales ultimately signed off on all of the administration's most controversial legal moves."

In his infamous torture memo, Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions "obsolete" and "quaint" and paved the way to the systematic abuse of detainees at Guant?namo and Abu Ghraib, many of whom are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. At CCR, we have seen the terrible effect of his policies on human beings first hand.

Even though experts in interrogation have long known that torture elicits false confessions and bad intelligence, Gonzales and his circle discussed the use of specific torture techniques like mock burial and water boarding, and approved the use of dogs, hooding, and extreme sensory deprivation, all forbidden by the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant Against Torture. Americans can now no longer expect to be protected by the Geneva Conventions: the policies devised by Mr. Gonzales have endangered our own troops the world over for decades to come.

Despite all this, many members of Congress have said they will not oppose Mr. Gonzales's nomination and that he will only be made to answer tough questions before sailing through the confirmation process.

We at the Center for Constitutional Rights object to giving an architect of torture a promotion. Tough questions are not enough. Please ask your Senators, Representatives and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to stand up and oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

Confirmation hearings begin this Wednesday. Please send a message to the Bush Administration and the world that the American people do not condone torture.