Bonnie Block: U.S. has only "outsourced" torture

Bonnie Block, WNPJ past chair and an attorney who resigned from the Wisconsin Bar association because "I did not want to be part of a profession where its members were writing memos justifying torture," writes to Wisconsin Congressional representatives about new reports that the U.S. hasn't stopped torture, it's just outsourced it to foreign governments acting under U.S. sponsorship. Here's her letter to her own Congressional Representative, Tammy Baldwin:

January 25, 2010

Dear Congresswoman Baldwin,
Five days ago I ended a 12-day liquids only Fast for Justice called by Witness Against Torture. I engaged in this fast because I felt compelled to take some action against the shameful practice of torture. The fast started on January 11, the date that men were first imprisoned in Guantanamo and ended on January 22, the date the President said it would be closed.

Yet Guantanamo is not closed—almost 200 men are still imprisoned there. Many of them are from Yemen and have been approved for release and yet the President announced they will not be returned home. There is even talk of having other prisoners being indefinitely detained without charges and without trial. As a lawyer, I know that this violates our most basic values and the rule of law. It is why during the second Bush/Cheney Administration, I petitioned for voluntary withdrawal from the Wisconsin State Bar. I did not want to be part of a profession where its members were writing memos justifying torture!

Credible reports, such as one by Allan Narin on Democracy Now, also tell us torture has not really ended even under the Obama Administration. It’s now being done by foreigners acting under US sponsorship. And the media has moved on to other issues as has the Congress it seems.

Even worse the people who authorized and engaged in torture have not yet been brought to justice. That must happen, starting with the events related in an article in Harper’s Magazine. If the allegations of three men being tortured to death in 2006 with a cover up by the Pentagon and Justice Department are true, it makes me ashamed to be an American. At the very least the allegations demand immediate investigation because they seem to be yet one more example of how the use of torture has made a sham of our system of justice.

Dealing with the issue of torture is also vital because “violence boomerangs.” The photos from Abu Ghraib were a better recruiting tool for future terrorists than anything a marketing genius could have dreamed up. The existence of Guantanamo and the twisting of our law by men like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Yoo cry out for justice. Yet up to now their crimes are granted impunity.
I believe until we close Guantanamo and all of the other secret CIA or JSOC sites that that I am convinced still exist, we will not be safe, nor will we be an honorable nation. Please bring this issue back into the public arena and do what is necessary to insure Guantanamo finally closesand this shameful regime of torture ends.

I know that there are those who will keep trying to frighten the American people into thinking that torture works -- but as political leaders it is your job to tell us the truth. And it is your job to do those things that will help make us safe in what is admittedly a sometimes dangerous world. But pretending that torture and a wasteful, unsuccessful “war on terror” will make us secure is living a lie—a lie that it is bankrupting us both financially and morally.

I long for you to tell the American people that we will stop dealing with crimes like that of 9/11 by war and occupation instead of by the rule of international law; that we will end the war in Afghanistan and the use of drones over Pakistan; and that we will not continue to spend over half of our income tax dollars every year for war, occupation and ever more lethal weapons. Our militarism means that we don’t have money for the things that provide Americans with true security, i.e. a safety net that protects the vulnerable, health care for everyone, an effective response to global climate change, and an economic system that functions with living wage jobs for all of our people.

I would like to hear what you are currently doing to insure that our country doesn’t continue to stoop to torture and indefinite detention as part of the so-called “war on terror.” And I would also like to hear how you will work to cut our massive military spending that always leads us to use the terror of war in a vain attempt to resolve global problems.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute issued its annual report on military spending in June of 2009. Worldwide, governments spent $1.46 trillion on their armed forces in 2008. The United States accounted for 42 percent of the global arms spending (and we are 6 percent of the global population!) How can we possibly continue to justify such disproportionate spending when there are starving, homeless, and despairing people in this country and all over the world who desperately need the resources we waste on war?
Sincerely,

Bonnie Block
Madison, WI