J. Conyers speech to AI on Torture, the Patriot Act, & War Against Terror

[paineinthearse]

A transcript of Rep. Conyers' April 8, 2005 speech to AI has been posted on AI's website. Today's blog entry serves to remind us all that * calls AI's recent report "absurd".

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050531.html

THE PRESIDENT: Terry.

Q Thank you, sir. Mr. President, recently, Amnesty International said you have established "a new gulag" of prisons around the world, beyond the reach of the law and decency. I'd like your reaction to that, and also your assessment of how it came to this, that that is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves with the United States government in the past -- and what the strategic impact is that in many places of the world, the United States these days, under your leadership, is no longer seen as the good guy.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation.

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, you know -- yes, sir.


President George W. Bush smiles as he responds to a reporter's question Tuesday morning, May 31, 2005, during a press availability in the Rose Garden of the White House. White House photo by Eric Draper

http://www.conyersblog.us/

My Speech Before Amnesty International on Torture, the Patriot Act, and the War Against Terror

As my regular readers know, about one month ago, I traveled to Yale University in New Haven to speak at an Amnesty International event regarding torture. I laid out what I thought to be a comprehensive case against the way our nation has conducted the so-called “war against terror,” the Patriot Act, and of course, our government’s indifference, if not outright sanctioning of torture.

Of course this was before the latest disclosures about new abuses in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and Amnesty International’s recent report, which has drawn unjustified and unsubstantiated criticism from both Bush and Cheney. When both the president and vice-president level their propaganda machine against you, to me that can mean only one thing – Amnesty International’s criticism are on target and have hit a sore point. Amnesty International is a group of great credibility and integrity and they deserve our collective thanks, not politically motivated criticism.

Anyway, Amnesty International has published my written speech. As I stated at the outset of my remarks:

“If you would have told me four years ago, that our nation was not only condoning, but actually engaging in torture and inhuman treatment, both abroad and at home, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you would have told me that our own Justice Department had developed the legal justification for these acts, I would have found you to be not credible. If you would have told me that we had deported a Canadian Citizen to Syria for ten months of torture and imprisonment, I would have said you must be thinking of a repressive dictatorship, such as Iran or Iraq, not the United States.

But that is where we are today. In many respects, the threat to our liberties today is more grave than previous overreactions to foreign threats to our country. However, unlike the crackdowns we experienced after the Civil War, World War I and II and the Vietnam War, today’’s war on terror has no likely or foreseeable end point.”

If you have a chance, please read the full text of my remarks, and let me know of your comments and thoughts.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/conyers.html

Denounce Torture

Remarks of Rep. John Conyers, Jr.

Yale University
April 8, 2005

Today our nation stands on the verge of a civil liberties calamity.

If you would have told me four years ago, that our nation was not only condoning, but actually engaging in torture and inhuman treatment, both abroad and at home, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you would have told me that our own Justice Department had developed the legal justification for these acts, I would have found you to be not credible. If you would have told me that we had deported a Canadian Citizen to Syria for ten months of torture and imprisonment, I would have said you must be thinking of a repressive dictatorship, such as Iran or Iraq, not the United States.

But that is where we are today. In many respects, the threat to our liberties today is more grave than previous overreactions to foreign threats to our country. However, unlike the crackdowns we experienced after the Civil War, World War I and II and the Vietnam War, today’s war on terror has no likely or foreseeable end point.

Geneva Convention and Other Laws

Perhaps most shocking of all is the Administration’s misunderstanding of the laws and treaties against torture. There is perhaps no more clear or more important principal in all of international law. Under the Geneva Convention, torture and other ill-treatment at any time of any person in custody is prohibited. This applies to every nation in the world. It applies during times of peace, times of armed conflict, and states of emergency. It applies to any person, whether a U.S. citizen or non-citizen. It applies inside the United States or outside of our borders.

In a breathtaking example of legal arrogance and sophistry, the Administration, led by the Justice Department and current Attorney General, has sought to gut this fundamental tenet of human rights and civilization.

First, they tried to argue that the Geneva Convention did not apply to our detainees. Than they said even if it did apply, what was happening at Abu Gharaib and other places did not constitute torture because it did not constitute “excruciating and agonizing pain equivalent to organ failure or death.” And finally they said even if the Convention did apply, and these acts did constitute torture, that no one in the Administration could be responsible since all the actions were pursuant to the President’s commander- in-chief authority.

As recently as last week, when asked about so-called “water boarding,” a euphemism for nearly drowning a prisoner during interrogation, CIA Director Porter Goss’ chilling reply was that it is “an area of what I call professional interrogation techniques.”

Detainees

Our treatment of the detainees is no better. In the wake of September 11, the Attorney General detained more than 1,200 immigrants for extended periods of time without any real authority. These individuals were never informed of the charges against them, never permitted contact with attorneys, their families, or even their embassies.

The Inspector General found that government employees had engaged in a “pattern of physical and verbal abuse” against the hundreds of immigration detainees rounded up after September 11. They were held in lock downs 23 hours a day with lights constantly on in their cells. Some were thrown against the wall naked and subjected to such verbal taunts as “You’re going to die here,” and “you will feel pain.”

Maher Arar

Perhaps the most outrageous abuse of all is the case of Maher Arar. A Canadian citizen on his way back home, he was detained in New York and shipped off to Syria by our government, where he was jailed and tortured for ten months, even though he has no ties to any terrorist group.

Deporting him to Syria, where imprisonment and torture were imminent, violates the International Convention Against Torture, which prohibits removing a person to another state “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” It also violates U.S. law.

It is important to note that our State Department is on record as having recognized the Syrian government’s use of torture tactics – including “electrical shock, removal of fingernails, and objects forced into the rectum.” We have also sent prisoners to Uzbekistan which was found to have boiled two prisoners to death, and which also frequently uses suffocation, electric shock, rape and severe beating.

Even more shocking is the Administration’s lax attitude towards torture and rendition. A former Justice Department lawyer admitted that, “The Convention only applies when you know a suspect is more likely than not to be tortured, but what if you kind of know? That’s not enough. So there are ways to get around it.” And a recently retired FBI agent has said, “‘They loved that these guys would just disappear off the books, and never be heard of again...They were proud of it.’”

Pending Legislation, Markey Bill

If you can believe it, the Republicans have even been trying to make it easier to outsource torture. As part of the Intelligence Reform bill last year, the House passed language that would have greatly increased the burden of proof imposed on these individuals facing torture abroad, by asking them to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that they would be tortured, and severely limited federal court review. The language was ultimately rejected by the Senate, but it is a measure of how far our Congress has sunk when such language can be considered, let alone approved.

There is one bit of good news. Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey and I have introduced a sound and simple bill to end extraordinary rendition. H.R. 4674 would require the Secretary of State to submit to Congress a list of any country in which “torture or degrading treatment is commonly used in interrogation and detention” and flatly prohibits our government from “rendering” persons in U.S. custody to these countries.

Unfortunately, this legislation has all but stalled under the thumb of Republican Congressional leadership. House Speaker Dennis Hastert does not support the Markey proposal because “he believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries.”

The Patriot Act

As we all know, torture is not the only area where America is forfeiting its birthright as a beacon of liberty and freedom. The Patriot Act, rushed through Congress while the wreckage of the World Trade Center was still smoldering permits the following:

- secret black bag searches (know as “delayed enforcement”), where law enforcement can search an individual’s home and indefinitely delay notifying him.
- immigrants can be retroactively deported for donating money to groups that they did not know were terrorists.
- unilateral and indefinite administrative detention of non-citizens based solely on the authority of the Attorney General.
- vastly expands the authority of the CIA to eavesdrop and wiretap persons in the United States, including citizens.
This week, the Attorney General told us that extending the terms of the Patriot Act was non-controversial, and that its provisions had never been misused. Yet as we now know, the Act has been misused on numerous occasions:

- It was used last year against Brandon Mayfield, an innocent Muslim American to tap his phones, seize his property, copy his computer, spy on his children, and take his DNA, all without his knowledge.
- Its been used to unconstitutionally coerce an Internet Service Provider to divulge information about email activity and web surfing on its system, and than to gag that Provider from even disclosing the abuse to the public.
- Its been used to charge, detain and prosecute a Muslim student in Idaho for posting Internet website links to objectionable materials, even though the same links were available on the U.S. government’s web site.
- Its been used to deny, on account of his political beliefs, the admission to the United States of a Swiss citizen and prominent Muslim Scholar to teach at Notre Dame University.
Misuse of Other Administrative Powers

As bad as the use and misuse of the Patriot Act have been, the gravest threat to our liberties has arisen from the Administration’s misuse of its general administrative powers.

The material witness laws are designed to secure testimony, not indefinitely detain individuals who can’t be charged. However, since September 11 the Washington Post has found that the law has been used to detain at least 44 witnesses, and nearly half of them have never been called to testify before a grand jury.

The president himself told us that racial profiling was wrong and that it ought to be illegal. Yet the Administration has found it fit to interview 50,000 Iraqis; to specially register more than 83,000 immigrants from the Middle East (but not of course, Saudi Arabia – where most of the 9/11 terrorists have come from); to “voluntarily” interview thousands of college students, mostly males and mostly from the Middle East. The net result of this dragnet? Not a single terrorism conviction.

Its not just John Conyers or the ACLU saying this – there is a growing number of independent and non-partisan voices telling the Administration that they need to reconsider the tactics being used to fight the war on terrorism:

- after the Justice Department issued new FBI Guidelines permitting the monitoring of mosques and religious cites without any indication of criminal activity, William Safire wrote that they had “gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.”
- Judge Damon Keith of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that by unilaterally shutting down immigration proceedings, the Administration was “seeking to uproot people’s lives outside the public eye, and behind a closed door. Democracies die behind closed doors.”
- When the Administration took it upon themselves to designate individuals as “enemy combatants,” without trial, lawyer, charges, or access to the outside world, the Supreme Court stated that the Administration’s position “serves only to condense power into a single branch of government.”
Conclusion

We cannot lose our voice of dissent. As Martin Luther King once told us, “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.” We cannot be bullied and intimidated when people like John Ashcroft charge that those who would criticize this Administration are “aiding the terrorists” and “giving ammunition to America’s enemies,” or when Ari Fleisher says Americans “need to be careful what they say.”

Many of us remember a time when the powers of the FBI and the CIA were horribly abused. Many of us know what it means to face racial profiling and religious persecution. Many of us know that our nation has over-reacted to threats of violence in the past by clamping down on legitimate protests and law abiding immigrants.

We all want to fight terrorism, but we want to fight it the right way, consistent with our constitution, and in a manner that serves as a model for the rest of the world. Torture does not make us safer, it only makes the world more dangerous and degrades our commitment to freedom and liberty.

[G_j]

1. great speech, direct,

He covers a lot of crucial territory.
Conyers is the Man!

[Tux]

2. Damn

Sickening. Nothing has been done and these Christians promote it.

[tsuki]

3. This needs to be read and re-read.

Any word on the group?

[paineinthearse]

4. The group has been up for 2 days.

Notices were placed in the GD and GDP forums. Both sank.

GD - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3765508 - a whopping FOUR replies.

GDP - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1821846&mesg_id=1821846 - a thundering FIVE replies.

The group is located at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=340

Re "This needs to be read and re-read." I agree. How? Many good Conyers posts have sunk faster than the notices did.

DU'ers are old dogs that have need time to learn new tricks. People need to check the John Conyers forum regularly for links to new posts. As one member has said, JC never sleeps, he is prolific. Hope DU can keep up.

[hootinholler]

5. Just read it, glad I opened it this AM

Looks like it sank like a rock too.

-Hoot

[Coexist]

6. hey - missed this earlier, thanks for the evening kick

Conyers for President.