I’m a cosponsor of Sen. Kennedy’s bill that defines a wide variety of specific things as torture, including waterboarding. It’s another reminder why I am so proud to be Ted’s colleague. But it’s also another reminder that those who suggest there’s nothing we can do to stop a run-away executive are just dead wrong – if we’ve got the courage of our convictions.
But, like everything we try to do, we’re going to have to ram it past the opposition of some Roadblock Republicans, and I’ll probably need your help.
Listen to veterans who know the importance of the Geneva Conventions prohibitions on torture to our soldiers on the battlefield. Listen to what John McCain says about torture. It’s a vital dividing line between civilization and barbarism, even in the worst of war. A country can’t cross that line without suffering grave harm, from increased danger to its soldiers to a lessening of moral authority in the world. There are some dividing lines of right and wrong that simply should not be crossed, and torture is one bright one. And I’m determined to do all I can to keep our country on the right side of that line.
In an Administration where Attorney Generals have seemed conveniently unsure of what constitutes torture, let’s give the next Attorney General a law that leaves no doubts in anyone’s minds. Let’s bring all of the United States government under the Army Field Manual’s directives, and specifically define as torture a series of actions and techniques, such as waterboarding, mock executions, beating or “other forms of physical pain to an individual”, and a number of others.
The sad truth is that we need to do this when you have an Administration that has blurred the lines of torture and a Vice President who lobbied for it. It’s time to make the Administration hear the voice of the American people saying, “We believe this is wrong, and we won’t have this done in our name.”
I set up a petition on my website where you say tell Congress that you believe that torture isn’t just immoral, it should be illegal. I included a place where you could put your own thoughts on why you believe this so strongly. We should all add our voice and say, “Not in our name!” So, click here to add your name to the list of Americans who are saying just that, “There will be no torture in my name.”
But that’s not the end; this will be a long legislative fight, and this is not just a petition, this is the beginning of a campaign to make this happen. So I’ll be keeping in touch with you, letting you know about more opportunities to make a difference, from calling into the offices of your Senators or Representatives to writing letters to the editors of your local paper and much more.
This is not going to be an easy fight. The Roadblock Republicans are well practiced in their methods of obstruction and fear on these issues, and they’ll be pulling out all the stops on this one, I’m sure. (The only time they seem to want to talk about Osama bin Laden is when they’re trying to defend actions like this, so I’m sure we’ll hear lots of scaremongering throughout this fight. We’ll need your help to get this done.)
It’s time to help put our country on record: torture is against the bedrock morals of this country, and we won’t stand for the use of it in our name.
A lot of people mentioned to me earlier that torture is already illegal, and that there are laws against waterboarding in particular. And that’s true. And, until this President, we never had a chief executive who wanted to blur those lines. But this President has been intent on defining “torture” differently, and his Administration claims that the CIA is not bound by the same statutes as the military. That was why Judge Mukasey’s refusal to define waterboarding as torture worried me: that ambiguity seemed consistent with the Administration’s views. So, what this legislation does is make it completely clear that all of our government is bound by the same restrictions as the military, period. It explicitly says that waterboarding is torture, and is therefore illegal. It closes a loophole that the Administration has been intent on exploiting.
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We could argue until we’re blue in the face on whether that loophole is real or not, but that won’t stop anything. We need to assert the power of the legislative branch and make clear exactly what the law is, for this and all future Administrations. We need to do what we can to make it crystal clear what we stand for as a nation.”4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097
The other thing lots of people asked about was the role of the petition … petitions are good for one thing: letting people know a lot of people care about an issue. So I’ll submit the numbers and list of people on the petition to my colleagues to let them know how many Americans want a change on this. But that can’t be the end; petitions are only the first step, just to get people’s attention. We need to do much, much more, and I intend on doing so. We need to keep building up the pressure, calling in to Congress and especially raise the heat in our greater society over this. So the petition is a great first step, but, like I said, it’s only a first step. I’ve seen too many petitions in my time that weren’t followed up with effective advocacy, and I’m determined that won’t happen here. If a petition is the whole campaign, that’s not much of a campaign and won’t change people’s minds.
Senator,
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Thank you for addressing this important issue head-on. The current state of affairs is shameful and ridiculous.
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I’ve always been skeptical about the effectiveness of online petitions and the like; are you saying that they are actually a useful component of a multi-faceted campaign?
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On a tangent, why are Congressional Democrats collectively so timid right now? Any insight that you could provide on that question would be most appreciated. I am personally quite let down after the 2006 election victories, and am not alone.
That is what I’m saying. Petitions aren’t much good by themselves. They’re too easy to ignore for some people. But as part of a larger campaign, they have a good place. They are still the easiest thing for people to do, so large numbers on the petition followed by activism showing people really care deeply about it demonstrates a breadth and depth of political support for an idea.
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As for your second question, I think some of that perception comes from the fact that it’s hard sometimes to communicate how the Senate works. Unfortunately, with the rules of the Senate, if one party is solely interesting in blocking things and has no interest in actually governing, it’s very difficult to get things done. So while many of us are working very hard to get things accomplished, the Roadblock Republicans are just blocking, and blocking, and blocking. Now, I’ll admit that some Democrats aren’t as aggressive on some issues as Senator Kennedy and I. But that’s why we need to show them how important all of these issues are to Americans, give them a little nudge. It’s also why we need to grow our majority. The country has changed enormously in the last few years, and I think we need to push Congress to catch up.
… because I realize the Senate majority is slim indeed.
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But things like Feinstein and Schumer voting for Mukasey bother me. I know there are rationales for such tactics, but I’d rather see more confrontation- not because I like confrontation per se (I always prefer cooperation), but our Administration seems to be continuing their mismanagement much like they did before 2006.
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Thank you.
It’s been suggested here (and maybe elsewhere) that delaying Mukasey’s confirmation vote until some of these issues get resolved might not be a bad idea. It could be made clear that the hold isn’t about Mukasey specifically, but about the administration’s continuing to play fast and loose with existing rules, and that it would be inappropriate to vote on the nomination before those issues are addressed in some way.
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Just a thought.
Something’s got to be done to get to these Roadblock Republicans. (nice phrase, Senator)
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The media seems to be buying the frame that obstruction from the GOP Minority is the Dems’ fault, and we’re not seeing any moves that look like Dems are making it uncomfortable to be a Roadblock Republican in the Congress.
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If you’re not going to put a ‘hold’ on somebody the Republicans want, like Mukasey or that product of nepotism, Julie Myers, then move to put an ethics inquiry into Ted Stevens (someone testified under oath that he bribed Stevens–that’s an ethics problem in the Senate, no?) or into Larry Craig (make him the face of the GOP on TV–make ’em eat a slice of their own homophobia pie).
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These Roadblock Republicans are blocking the will of the people: keeping soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq and keeping kids from getting health insurance.
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They are making life tough on ordinary people.
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It’s only fair to make life tough on them.
Senator Kerry has set up a couple ActBlue pages to put pressure on these Republicans over the airwaves and to fund their Democratic challengers once chosen. One such page is here and another is here.
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This is an excellent development, IMHO, because Democrats need to be more aggressive on the PR front.
The Senate runs on unanimous consent. A “hold” is advanced notice that someone is going to object to the motion to bring a bill up. A “secret hold” is when whoever wants to object has their leadership announce the objection on the floor of the Senate without giving the name of the person who objects.
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Holds can be overridden. Another Senator can ask for a Motion to Proceed. That will bring a bill, nomination, etc, to the floor. The Motion to Proceed can be subject to a cloture vote. This happened in 2006 when Sen. Inouye had a bill that the Republicans in charge at the time refused to put on the Senate calendar. Cloture Vote on Motion to Proceed
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A hold could be placed on this nomination. Any Senator could then go to the floor and ask for a Motion to Proceed. A vote would then ensue. 60 votes in favor of cloture brings the vote to the floor. We already know in the Mukasey nomination, that there are 60 Senators, duly chosen and sworn, who have said they will vote to confirm Mukasey.
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The nomination can’t be blocked this way. The hold would not, ah, hold.
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References:
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CRS Rules of the Senate
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CRS How the US House works
That was informative.
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I appreciate the efforts to exert the authority of the legislative branch. Keep it up.
There are all 49 Republicans, and one CT-for-Lieberman. We’ve got at least two Democrats. Who are the other approximately 8 Dems who have said they will support Mukasey’s nomination?
Maaybe it’s from being a Republican in Massachusettts, and all those 20 – 140 votes in the Legislature I’ve seen go by.
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You ‘know’ how the vote would go. Even if you’re right – why would you not want to go on record?
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Full disclosure – I do not agree with the Senator about this, but I am curious about the strategy.
Sen. Kerry has announced his opposition to this nomination and has listed the reasons for the opposition. The actual confirmation is an ‘on the record’ vote. It will be listed, when it happens, on the Senate website.
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You can access all votes and the text of all legislation voted on since 1989 at the US Senate Votes website.
You say “We already know in the Mukasey nomination, that there are 60 Senators, duly chosen and sworn, who have said they will vote to confirm Mukasey.”
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Are you folks brainless as well as spineless? There were at least 40 senators on the floor who DID vote against Mukasey and at least four more (Clinton, Obama, Dodd and Biden who were not there but also said they would not support Mukasey. Does 100 minus 44 equal 60 where you come from?
Senator, thanks for your moral clarity on the issue of torture. My only concern with your proposal is that a statute outlawing one particular form of torture, or even a laundry list of tortures, could create the implication that Congress did not mean to ban other forms of torture. I am sorry to say I don’t doubt the creativity of the Administration in this area, so I worry that we may open new doors for torture if we close the door on waterboarding.
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Isn’t there something to be said for the relative simplicity of the current statute, which defines torture with reference to its purposes and effects but without reference to particular techniques?
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All that being said, I think it’s terrific that with you and Senator Kennedy representing us in Congress, Massachusetts is taking the lead on challenging the Bush Administration’s shameful defense of torture as a tool of American policy.
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I hope you and Senator Kennedy will also take up the fight against the President’s assertion of so-called “commander-in-chief” authority to ignore statutes that supposedly infringe on his executive authority. After all, what good is a statute banning waterboarding if the President, through a signing statement, signals his intention to ignore it? Is there some way Congress could use the power of the purse–the one power that even the President’s most ardent supporters agree belongs entirely to Congress–to rein in the President when he disregards clear statutory commands?
In the legislation, it says the techniques “include, but are not limited to, the following:”
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So it’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, and it explicitly does not imply that actions not names are OK.
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The Army Field Manual has pretty good strictures on what is and isn’t torture, but the Bush Administration has tried to muddy the waters on whether that applied to the CIA. This legislation closes that perceived loophole and makes sure that all of the US government follows those rules.
“actions not names” should be “actions not named” …
another way they rule by fiat. This is plainly unAmerican.
Thanks. This goes to the heart of who we are in the US and that we have to draw the line.
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This is an excellent companion essay by Chris Dodd on today’s Huffington Post
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http://www.huffingto…
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Thank you Senator Kerry—And thanks to everyone else here — you wouldnt be reading or posting if you didnt care about the essence of what is right and wrong.
I disagree with the unconditional ban on broadly defined torture.
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I think times are – or will soon be – such that WMD (ok, gasp, WMD again) but yes WMD – think nukes – may proliferate into the hands of suicidal bad guys. Lord knows we don’t seem to be able to stop proliferation into Iran, which is probably one of the most likely sources of nation->badguy proliferation.
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So if that happens, and a Nuke is going to level Boston and you have a guy who knows where it is, what do you do?
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Yea that is an annoying hypothetical but if we don’t stop proliferation it may happen. Maybe not to us but to our children or their children.
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If something even remotely close to that happens – a rare case I admit! – then we MUST do ANYTHING that we can to stop it. Torture or otherwise.
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And I don’t buy the whole “torture never works” argument for a second.
on a nuke and one of the lunatic terrorists is captured, and the clock is truly ticking on that nuke, what exactly are you going to do get him to talk in time?
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it’s been proven time and time again that all torture does it get someone to talk. But torture is no guarantee that the person talking will actually tell you the truth.
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If that nightmare scenario does present itself, and it really is just a matter of minutes or hours until a nuke goes off, why wouldn’t the terrorist just keep on throwing out different locations? He knows that you know the clock is ticking. Wouldn’t he, or anyone for that matter, just keep making stuff up?
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if the best we can come up with to stop an imminent terrorist nuke attack on boston is hooking up some jumper cables to a guy’s nuts, we’re screwed.
…someone else in the USofA understands the “ticking time bomb” fallacy regarding torture. And that fallacy ignores the fact that there might be more than one “ticking time bomb” that the captured presumed terrorist is not aware of.
Yea sure there’s no “guarantee” but if you think that “its been proven time and again that torture ever works”, please do point out which studies or other proofs you refer to.
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Its all about motivation (a foreign concept to marxists, granted). Motives can be postive, or negative. Its the carrot and the stick. Ever hear of that?
that was supposed to be “never” works
Is that they are all experts on everything from global warming to interrogation techniques.
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I think it’s delightful that you believe so strongly in torture. Do you have ANY evidence that it’s an effective technique other than your own bravado? Otherwise, I’m going to lump it with your belief that homosexuality is a choice.
All that garbage aside, what do you do if someone has e.g. your child someplace, kidnapped, and you’ve got a hold of one of them?
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Talk nicely or kick the snot out of them?
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Yea.
But I do admire your absolute refusal to deal with facts.
…like the president purports to be…
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I wish that that once -just once- that one-tenth of the fervor and energy used in promoting torture was used to produce something useful, like diplomacy or the rule of law… Things that are actually in line with the Christianity the President purports to embrace…
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I have a 9 year old son who spends more time and energy complaining that he’s too tired to brush his teeth at night than actually takes to brush. But he actually likes having clean teeth, and shows them off at every opportunity. Likewise, so much energy and effort and fervor spent on torture could, at one-tenth the expenditure, be spent on that which we profess to profess…
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But it seems adolescent fantasies of violence and pain-infliction trumps Christianity and real world adult problem solving (like prevention and de-esecalation).
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I hope you’d agree that there is a vast difference between “promoting torture” and “allowing for its use in certain extraordinary circumstances, presuming that it could have some chance of success where all other methods have demonstrably failed”.
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No I’m not a Christian and no I’ve actually never watched a whole episode of “24”.
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Anyway I’m glad we’re off the “torture never works” angle.
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We are nowhere near ‘all other methods have demonstrably failed‘ and have never even come close. That is a patently ridiculous line of argument and I won’t accept it from you or anyone else. You must need be willing to try something in the first place before writing it off as failure. This is clearly PROMOTION of torture: in fact, the twists and turns of logic and maneuvering necessary to get us to this place -without ever once giving alternatives a try- is strongly indicative of a pathology that is deep and ugly. You can either repudiate it, or own it. Choice is yours.
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Bah..! I guess as long as you can score points… the debate keeps right on humming along…
Possibly kicking the snot out of one of them would endanger the child.
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Would you like to play chess instead?
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Nf3
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Your move.
I’m guessing your average kidnapper is more likely to be able to kick the crap out of your average BMG poster.
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The real issue is leverage. They’ve got your child. You’ve hurt one of them. As you say, your move.
So if that happens, and a Nuke is going to level Boston and you have a guy who knows where it is, what do you do?
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Obviously, you change the channel because a movie built on such an unrealistic plot device is going to be pretty stupid. Maybe there’s a good advertisement on for hair products.
During the Nuremberg trials, this country was party to convicting and hanging Nazis for crimes against humanity. We were clear about torture. In order to enjoy totally made up hypotheticals like the above, the authoritarians want us to sacrifice the moral clarity for which our nation so nobly fought.
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Honestly, is one’s comic book collection so important?
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“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” — Abraham Lincoln
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I, personally, would rather die at the hands of a terrorist, than make my hands complicit in torture.
that we do in fact practice waterboarding on our own military.
people in our military who are being trained to inflict this torture on others are themselves drowned by this method so that they better understand how to utilize it.
???
Dude, you need to watch less TV.
After listening to all of that wind, I hope you have a little left for a filibuster. If the past is any indication, you should have quite a bit left.
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John, you are one of the best speakers and talkers I know. Unfortunately, people want action!
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Let’s be clear and simple here. Propose a filibuster!!
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In case you haven’t noticed, people are outraged over the political paralysis of which you have become a part.
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I hope to see you soon in a forum where you will actually enter into dialogue rather than the top down model you have been using.
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We need to talk about issues such as your insistence to keep troops in Iraq, your opposition to marriage equality, your opposition to single payer health care and your obsession with raising big money and the effect that has on your decision making.
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The people of Massachusetts deserve to know, if and where, their Senator stands and you need to come down from the pulpit.
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Let’s talk.
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Ed O’Reilly
A Massachusetts Democrat for U.S. Senate
http://www.edoreilly.com
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Ps. Great job herding people to your website and perhaps you’ll get them on your mailing list.
Here is one for the Senator.
During his 2004 campaign he clearly stated that he would work to close the tax breaks given to companies that offshore jobs. It has been 3 years since then and he has done nothing, rather he blocks any such legislation from advancing and feeds us crap like this.
When I attempt to ask him what he is doing, the question always hits the circuit breaker and no network available to me is able to pose this question to him.
I would love to see someone put the question to him.
Also wondered what he meant when he said (regarding trade) that its “hard to negotiate with your banker when the bill is due” …. Its on tape but he wont go on record.
The more you demand action of Kerry, while somehow completely ignoring the Senior Senator, the more you look to be playing the same old political game that you so often deride Kerry for.
It seems pretty clear that your outrage and indignation has nothing to do with torture and everything to do with getting in good with potential donors, door knockers and sign holders.
“I'm Ed O'Reilly and I'm against torture. So is my opponent Senator John Kerry. But while Senator Kerry is wasting his time rallying national opposition against AG Mukasey's nomination and trying to push other Democratic senators to oppose Mukasey, I'm doing what really needs to be done: posting on BMG about what a windbag Kerry is and demanding that Kerry get out of Washington and come debate me in Massachusetts. If you want to stop torture, there's only way– demand that Senator John Kerry debates me. No debate for me means more waterboarding for all of you.”
I can write sharp lines like this, but I’m an anonymous person on a blog. I’m not running for political office. Taunting does not sound Senatorial.
…the Captains and the Kings depart…
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OK. I would like to answer the Senator’s original question, sans blind alleys of debate.
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Detention and questioning of hostile terrorists are of limited value without the threat of torture and death to back them up.
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I feel about torture the same way I feel about the death penalty – it should be legal, but used sparingly and as a last resort.
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I am aware of Geneva Convention rules, but until the Taliban begins to issue dogtags, ranks and serial numbers, I am not prepared to say that we are engaged with a standing army or force. I also do not accept the argument that our soldiers will suffer more if we use torture, as they are killed now, in gruesome ways for internet display, rather than being given POW status.
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I hope that is unvarnished enough – and I am a constituent.
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Having a soul, and exercising it regularly, are of limited value without the spine and character to back them up…
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Any terrorist locked up and questioned is a terrorist who’s not out building bombs. End of ‘limited values’ discussion.
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There are many things that are worse than death. One of those things is committing torture. I care very little for these arguments that are so transparently cowardly and I care even less so for the Taliban and any actions they might take.
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You’ve got my signature.
I’ll continue to work against your re-election, as I have since your vote on the original war resolution. But if I had any illusions that you were learning from your mistake, this exercise in hypocrisy has set me straight. If you oppose the guy, you should have filibustered. If you are willing to let him take office, you shouldn’t pretend that you are outraged.