Last Sunday, Nancy Pelosi vowed to wrangle up the votes needed to pass a health care bill even if it meant some Democratic lawmakers would be voted out of office in November's midterm elections.

"Why are we here? We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress. We're here to do the job for the American people," Pelosi said in an interview on ABC News' "This Week."

"The point is we have a responsibility here ... " Pelosi said later on CNN's "State of the Union," explaining the urgency in passing legislation.

If only Pelosi and other Democrats applied the same aggressive attitude toward holding Bush administration officials accountable for implementing a policy of torture against "war on terror detainees" after 9/11.

While it may seem like a stretch to talk about health care benefits and torture in the same breath, there is a direct link between the two issues. Indeed, it was a Medicare benefits statute and other health care provisions that were used to form the basis for one of two August 2002 torture memos.

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Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s ongoing letter writing campaign. The purpose of this series is to try to keep the issue of accountability under the law for the Bush Administrations state sponsored torture program. Every week the Dog writes to decision makers on this issue reminding them of their responsibility under the law to investigate all credible allegations of torture and where evidence exists to prosecute the offenders. This is a community action, and your part in is to either cut and paste the letter over your own signature or to use it to write one of your own. The Dog provides all the e-mail addresses or links to the decision makers; you just provide a little typing time and some electrons.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

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So now the House of Representatives has passed a bill. It has some problems, starting with the odious Stupak Amendment. Still there is a lot of reason for mild happiness. We are closer to comprehensive health insurance reform than we have been in the Dog’s life time. All the details aside, this is a very good thing, as it means we are significantly more likely to achieve real reform than we have been before.

Originally posted at Square State.

The next hurdle is, of course, the United States Senate. We have already seen Sen. Lieberman lining up to prove that A) he is not a Democrat anymore and B) that he is the biggest obstructionist asshole in the history of obstructionist assholes. Not only is he putting himself in the way of reform, he is making it easier for other lily-livered Democratic Senators to do the same.

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Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s ongoing letter writing campaign for accountability for the Bush Era State Sponsored Torture program. The premise of this campaign is to write decision makers every Monday urging them to do the right thing in terms of our international treaty obligations and our Federal statutes. This means to investigate the enormous amount of prima facie evidence and where warranted by the evidence, to prosecute. The Dog writes a letter every week, which you, the activist, can either cut and paste or use as the jumping off point for your own letter.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

This week we will be writing to AG Holder, with carbon copies to the President, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the Chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary, Rep Conyers and Sen. Leahy.

Dear Attorney General Holder;

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Originally posted at TomDispatch.com

Don't Turn the Page on History: Facing the American World We Created

We've just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here's how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney's orders, didn't inform Congress that, to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders, it was trying to develop and deploy global death squads. (Of course, just about no one is going to call them that, but the description fits.) Congress is now in high dudgeon. The CIA didn't keep that body's "Gang of Eight" informed. A House investigation is now underway.

We're told that the CIA -- being the president's private army and part of the executive branch of our government -- has committed a heinous dereliction of duty. In fact, not keeping key congressional figures up to date on the developing program could even "be illegal," according to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin. (Not that Congress, when informed of Bush administration extreme acts, ever did much of anything anyway.)

This story, however, has a largely unexplored strangeness to it that has only been discussed on the fringes of the mainstream media (or in the press of other countries). After all, during the eight years this CIA assassination program was supposedly in formation, U.S. military special ops death squads were, as far as we can tell, freely roaming the planet conducting (or botching) assassination missions, and the CIA's own robot assassins, airborne death squads, were also launching operations -- sometimes wiping out innocent civilians -- from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan. They continue to run such operations in the skies over the Pakistani tribal borderlands near Afghanistan. So we still await an explanation of just why the CIA spent close to eight years, under Vice Presidential oversight, getting its death squads almost operational, but never -- we're told -- off the ground.

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(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
Probe: Taliban used civilians as ‘human shields’
Since the mighty have blistered with fire
Since so many homes have been crushed
Since all that’s left to grieve is death
Since so many lie hushed in their graves
Since unknown journeys have yet to come
Children, mothers and fathers rise up with full and shaking tongue
And lash this god-awful hatred and war from the earth!
Speak, shout, stand among the dead and be their song…

Pope warns of misuse of religion
“Misuse of religion”… redundant utterance;
Synonymously dripping out a man whose lips

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This just in from Andy Worthington (H/T Barb):

The Arabic media is ablaze with the news that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of an Afghan training camp — whose claim that Saddam Hussein had been involved in training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons was used to justify the invasion of Iraq — has died in a Libyan jail. So far, however, the only English language report is on the Algerian website Ennahar Online, which reported that the Libyan newspaper Oea stated that al-Libi (aka Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) “was found dead of suicide in his cell,” and noted that the newspaper had reported the story “without specifying the date or method of suicide.”

It was al-Libi who was tortured by the CIA, subjected to mock burial in a box 20 inches high, in order to "confess" to a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, just days after the start of the Iraq War. Al-Libi later recanted. Afterwards, he was disappeared.

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A devastating document chronicling the dates and explicit details of secret Congressional briefings in which members of Congress were told of the Bush administration’s torture techniques and when they had been used has been leaked from the Central Intelligence Agency.

"Briefings given to Democrats are of particular significance because the party has been the most vocal about the Bush Administration’s torture practices. Apparently, however, they had known about the practices for years. At least 19 Democrats were briefed about the techniques in detail by end of 2006." says John Byrne at RawStory.

"The document appears to conflict with recent statements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Ms. Pelosi has said she hadn't been told that the CIA was using the technique known as waterboarding, or simulated drowning. According to the document, Ms. Pelosi was one of the first lawmakers briefed on the interrogations in 2002." reports the Wall Street Journal.

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Welcome to the 9th in the Dog’s letter writing campaign series. This series is dedicated to taking action (even if it is a small action) every week on the issue of torture. Here is how it works, each week the Dog writes a letter highlighting some aspect of the torture issue and making the point this requires investigation. The Dog sends these letters to the President, the Supreme Court, AG Holder, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Rep. John Conyers, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Your part, if you chose to act is pretty easy. Simply cut and paste the letter and send it under your own name.

There is always a little worry when folks are sending exactly the same letter, so always feel free to fix it up to make it more personal to you. The important part is that you do send in some kind of communication that is different every week. This is a way to keep the point that there is a significant percentage of the population who is not going to just let this issue drop in front of those who can make the decision to do the right thing and investigate the Bush State Sponsored Torture program, and let the law go where is should.

This week’s letter is to AG Holder, with copies to all the others:

Dear Attorney General Holder:

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Welcome to the sixth of the Dog’s letter writing campaign series. The Dog usually posts these on Monday’s but his Step Dad was having major heart surgery and the Dog could not focus very well yesterday (he is fine BTW). The basic premise here is to, on a weekly basis; write a letter to the President, the Attorney General, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, urging them to investigate the apparent State Sponsored Torture program of the Bush Administration. In order to get their attention, every week the Dog writes from a different perspective about the issue, so that on the off chance that they read more than one of these letters it is clear that it is not the same thing over and over. This series also offers the reader the chance to write their own letter or cut and paste the Dog’s letter and send it in. The more people that we have sending weekly letters the higher chance that we will be heard on this issue, so if you could take the time to send this along it would be greatly appreciated.

Cross posted at Square State

This week’s letter:

Dear (insert name here);

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