It’ll never happen, but it would be good if it did

Dear Friends:

Thank you to everyone who has endorsed the statement “U.S.-sponsored Torture:

A Call for a Commission of Inquiry” and to those who are collecting endorsements from others. NRCAT is calling for a Commission of Inquiry (COI) so that our nation can learn the complete facts about U.S.-sponsored torture since 9/11 and thereby build a national consensus to assure that our country will never use torture again. Getting a Commission of Inquiry is proving to be a challenging task. Many Members of Congress do not support it, and at this point Senator Leahy, one of the strongest advocates for it in the Senate, is unable to find a Republican cosponsor. We have our work cut out for us. So far, we have more than 2200 endorsers of our statement (after about a month). Here’s what we can do to strengthen our effort:

1. If you have not yet endorsed, please click here to endorse online. We need to grow the number of people of faith endorsing quickly in order to maximize the effectiveness of our call for a Commission of Inquiry. We also urge you to click here for a petition version of the statement for a COI. Please take the petition to your congregation or religious community and ask people to endorse.
2. NRCAT is also eager to encourage national and regional faith group bodies, ecumenical and interfaith organizations, congregations and other religious organizations to consider endorsing the COI. Click here for a page that includes: a model resolution that you might suggest that your religious organization use, the list of religious organizations endorsing to date and a form for reporting that your religious organization has endorsed.
3. Click here for a page of resources and suggestions for promoting the Commission of Inquiry. The page also includes a link to a letter to Eric Holder and NRCAT’s statement calling on the Department of Justice to investigate for criminal culpability.
4. June is Torture Awareness Month. NRCAT is urging people of faith to encourage their congregations to incorporate the concern about torture into worship, to study the issue using a new DVD resource prepared by NRCAT and to consider displaying a banner. We are also encouraging delegations of people of faith across the country to visit their Members of Congress at the end of June. Click here to learn more about these opportunities. We will be updating the web site page on Torture Awareness Month during the next two months and we will send an email to you with more suggestions for using Torture Awareness month in mid-April.

We still have much to do this year, but thank you for everything you have done to end U.S.-sponsored torture. It has made a difference.

Sincerely,

Linda Gustitus, President
Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director

I will lay odds that the very same people who have spent years making the case for fog, scratching their heads in bafflement over what O what torture is, demanding (and rejecting) definitions of torture (while supplying none of their own), professing utter mystification over whether waterboarding, cold cells, and strappado are torture, and insisting that “we don’t torture–and besides the people we torture deserve it” will, like a common heroin dealer in New Jersey, be absolutely dead set against such inquiries since, like a common heroin dealer in New Jersey, such people are livin incarnations of the fact that darkness hates light. The same excuses offered by the heroin dealer will be given: that the System is rigged, that the Man has it in for him.

Sheesh! If our system of justice is *that* bad, them a) why were we trying to export it to Iraq and b) why did they feel so confident that it provided sufficient grounds to inflict torture “enhanced interrogation” on their victims?