Have You Ever Done Anything To Stop Our Government From Torturing People? You Can

You may have noticed that we're not big on asking DWT readers to sign petitions. Groups like the DCCC ruined them just the way they ruined crowd-sourcing e-mails. They always use they as a means to get people to give over their contact information so that they can be preyed upon by people looking for contributions. Recently, though, we did urge people to sign a petition to keep Nancy Pelosi from appointing Wall Street's Jim Himes chairman of the DCCC. It appears to have worked. So let's try another! This one is a wide coalition effort that was organized by our friends at Daily Kos and the goal is to get outgoing Colorado Senator Mark Udall to officially expose the CIA's absolutely illegal use of torture, especially in the light of the breakdown in negotiations over releasing the report voluntarily. The Administration insists on redacting too much information, gratuitously. This is the petition:

The Senate Intelligence Committee's "torture report" is expected to detail shocking abuse of prisoners at the hands of the CIA during the Bush administration, and even possible CIA lying to Congress.

But seven months after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted overwhelmingly to release the report to the American people, the White House is stonewalling Congress and demanding "redactions"--blacked-out sections and information-- before making its contents public.

But there's a way around that-- and before the end of the year, we have a rare chance to make it happen.

Members of Congress have an absolute right to free speech, and a member could enter the report into the Congressional Record in its entirety-- just as the Pentagon Papers were in 1971-- without fear of prosecution.

That's exactly what transparency advocates are calling on outgoing, staunchly anti-torture and pro-transparency Sen. Mark Udall to do.

Sign the petition to Sen. Mark Udall: If you enter the torture report into the Congressional Record, we'll have your back.

Our Message to Sen. Mark Udall:

Before leaving office, please submit the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report to the Congressional Record. We know that you are considering undertaking this heroic and courageous act, and we and countless others will support you if you choose to do so.

We will deliver a copy of this petition and a list of signers to Sen. Mark Udall, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein and President Obama to make sure our message is heard.

Blue America
CREDO
Daily Kos
Demand Progress
Digby's Hullabaloo
Fight for the Future
Just Foreign Policy
The Nation
RH Reality Check
RootsAction.org
USaction
Win Without War

You can sign it here. Because we really don't ever want more of this crap:

And this is the letter Blue America is sending out to all our members in the morning:

There have a been many dark days in America during the past decade but the revelation that the government had authorized the torture of prisoners has to be one of the darkest. It took a lot of painstaking journalism to uncover what we know even as the government did everything in its power to cover up the details, going so far as to destroy evidence and immunize the perpetrators from prosecution.

Nonetheless, the Senate Intelligence Committee went to great lengths to compile a 6,000 page report on this ugly chapter in our history. It was approved for release by a majority of the committee many months ago but the White House insisted on a further review and approval process even going so far as to insist that pseudonyms be redacted. They are still dragging their feet.  If they have their way the report will be issued with every word blacked out except  "the" and "end." As of yesterday, the outlook for its release any time soon looked bleak.

The Senate is going to lose one of its foremost civil libertarians at the end of this congress. Senator Mark Udall, who lost his seat  in the midterm election, has been among the few in congress who performed his oversight duties as a member of the Intelligence Committee with independence and integrity and he will be missed.

But he could do one last act of conscience before he goes: as a sitting Senator, he can place the Torture Report into the congressional record as former Senator Mike Gravel did back in 1971 with the Pentagon Papers.

Udall himself has said he is considering it: Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who was defeated in the midterm elections, has threatened to read the unredacted report into the Congressional Record on the Senate floor, a rare and provocative move that is nevertheless protected by the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause.

"I'm not going to accept the release of any version of the executive summary that doesn't get out the truth of this program," Udall told the Denver Post last week.

"Not only do we have to shed light on this dark chapter of our nation's history, but we've got to make sure future administrations don't repeat the grave mistakes."

We are hoping that Senator Udall will cap his Senate career with this act patriotism and we have joined with several other groups to petition him to do it. If you would like to sign on to this request along with us, you can click here.

This isn't an easy thing to ask of any Senator. But torture isn't just another issue. It goes to the very heart of who we are as a country. Senator Udall can help this nation face up to what happened and let the government know that it must never, ever, happen again.

Thank you for all you do to make this world a better place.