I Do Not Wish to be Associated with Torture (R McGovern)

[katty]

cont'd: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030206A.shtml

I Do Not Wish to Be Associated With Torture
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Letter

Thursday 02 March 2006

Hon. Pete Hoekstra, Chair
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC

Dear Congressman Hoekstra:

As a matter of conscience, I am returning the Intelligence Commendation Award medallion given me for "especially commendable service" during my 27-year career in CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the same category as rape and slavery - intrinsically evil. I do not wish to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

Reports in recent years that CIA personnel were torturing detainees were highly disturbing. Confirmation of a sort came last fall, when CIA Director Porter Goss and Dick Cheney - dubbed by the Washington Post "Vice President for Torture" - descended on Sen. John McCain to demand that the CIA be exempted from his amendment's ban on torture. Subsequent reports implicated agency personnel in several cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq, including a few in which detainees died during interrogation.

The obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and the country - not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts, turn a blind eye to torture - letting some people get away, literally, with murder - and square that with your conscience?

[understandinglife]

1. Ray McGovern is amazing.

Peace.

[katty]

3. yes-he has been vigilant and public about this admin

[sui generis]

2. I am just shaking my head

thinking I could not imagine a statement like this in America in the 21st century unless I was reading a work of fiction.

It's not fiction - we literally "torture" people to death. In America. In the 21st century. And our government fought hard for the right to do that.

Wow.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Here's to an American's American Ray McGovern, I salute you!

:patriot:

Kicked and recommended!

:kick:

[Dudley_DUright]

5. K&R

Ray McGovern is a true man of conscience and a real inspiration. I post his writings every chance I get.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. !!

[MasonJar]

7. Thank God for citizens emeritus like Ray. Porter Goss and Pat

Roberts are Bush whores.