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We Defend the Constitution to Protect the Country
Thank you, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, for that introduction and for all you've done. As the Navy JAG officer who helped win one of the most important Supreme Court cases in recent memory, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, you helped prove that the President cannot overturn the rule of law and establish his own system of justice.
I also want to thank you for calling my attention to some wonderful words from George Marshall, architect of the D-Day invasion, and namesake of the Marshall Plan. Here's what he said:
"The United States abides by the laws of war....Wanton killing, torture, cruelty, or the workings of unusual hardship on enemy prisoners or populations is not justified under any circumstances. Likewise respect for the reign of law...is expected to follow the flag wherever it goes."
George Marshall spoke those words in the middle of last century; but they could have been spoken at any time in our history.
Those words sum up a founding insight: that the rule of law extends even to those enemies we most despise; that our Constitution's principles are transcendent; that in America, right makes might.
With the law following our flag, we threw down tyrants and oppressors for two centuries; we rid the world of Nazism and Soviet communism; we proved that great strength can serve great virtue.
America was a light to the world, and our adherence to the rule of law the foundation of our security for the last half of the 20th century.
Today, in the early years of the 21st century, our defining question is a very simple one:
Can we defend America if we fail to defend our Constitution and the rule of law?
That's not a loaded question--there are a good number of Americans who say the answer is Yes.
They don't answer that question lightly. They are well-intentioned. They believe that the terrorist threat we're facing is so vast, so unprecedented, that parts of our Constitution become luxuries and the Geneva Conventions has become, in the words of the former Attorney General, "quaint."
The height of this false dichotomy came on September 28th of last year, the day the United States Senate voted to pass President Bush's Military Commissions Act.
That was the day the U.S. Senate gave into fear. The Senate was frightened out of the rule of law, and into the waiting arms of the rule of men. The United States Senate gave President Bush everything he wanted. It gave him the power to designate any individual an "unlawful enemy combatant," hold him indefinitely, and take away the right to habeas corpus - the 900-year-old right to challenge your detention.
And worst of all, the Military Commissions Act gave President Bush the power to get information out of suspected terrorists--by any means. The power to use evidence gained from torture - which historically has proven to be so unreliable.
I spoke against that disgraceful bill. I voted against the bill. But unfortunately I was in a small minority.
Because of that decision and others like it, America is making itself known to the world not for what we accomplished on the beaches at Normandy; not for what we created with the Marshall Plan; not for the moral authority born at Nuremberg - moral authority that fortified America's leadership and helped create international institutions that served the common good and security of all nations for sixty years, from the United Nations...to NATO...to the IMF.
Rather America is increasingly known today for Abu Ghraib. For Guantanamo.
Put simply, the President's military commissions exist to protect abusive behavior.
The President wants to keep interrogation methods secret--not just from the press, not just from the American public, but from the defendant's own lawyer! When he represented Salim Hamdan before a military commission, Lt. Cmdr. Swift wasn't even allowed to ask his client what had been done to him.
Let me be clear - under very clearly prescribed circumstances, military commissions can be a useful instrument for bringing our enemies to justice. But not under the absurd set of strictures that pass for justice in some circles in the year 2007.
Yet again and again, most recently as last month, President Bush insists: "This government does not torture."
Waterboarding isn't torture? Malcolm Nance is a 26-year expert in intelligence and counter-terrorism, a combat veteran, and former Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School who has trained American soldiers to resist interrogation.
Listen to Malcolm Nance. He writes waterboarding - "does not simulate drowning...The victim is drowning...slow motion suffocation....When done right it is controlled death."
Now, if you'd rather use a euphemism--"enhanced interrogation"--feel free. Feel free to use a bureaucratic term like "extraordinary rendition"--as long as we all know that it means kidnapping the citizens of Western nations and shipping them to the Middle East for outsourced torture. Feel free to talk about "fraternity hazing," like Rush Limbaugh did, or to use a favorite term of Vice President Cheney's, "a dunk in the water"--just as long as everyone understands that you're talking about a technique invented by the Spanish Inquisition and perfected by the Khmer Rouge.
That, my friends, is waterboarding. It is torture. This Administration thinks it is legal. Mine will not - because there is no place for it in our America. We are better than this.
Thus, my disappointment in the man who President Bush has picked to be our nation's chief law enforcement officer. As Judge Mukasey said when he came before the Senate, "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional." It was almost as if Judge Mukasey was pleading the fifth.
Even more importantly, Judge Mukasey was asked if the President can openly break the law? Can he order warrantless wiretapping, ignore the will of Congress, and then hide behind powers he claims to find in the Constitution?
Judge Mukasey's response: The President has "the authority to defend the country" outside of a federal statute. In one swoop, Judge Mukasey conceded to the President nearly unlimited power, as long as it serves the purpose of "defending the country."
I'm not exaggerating when I say we have a choice in this country, between the rule of law and the rule of men. Once we endorse this culture of lawbreaking at the highest levels, it becomes contagious at all levels.
The President's favored individuals, and his favored corporations, get to break the law, too. In the last few years, President Bush asked America's biggest telecom companies to spy on their own customers. They complied willingly; they handed over your private information to the Administration. Now President Bush is asking Congress to give those companies immunity for everything they've done--to declare their lawbreaking legal.
Congress wanted to know--reasonably enough--exactly what actions it would be cleaning up. And the President's answer: "I can't tell you. It's a secret."
So the Congress and the people are kept in the dark, replacing General Marshall's eloquent words with a simpler, darker motto: "Just trust me. I know what is best."
That is not the America I grew up in - nor is the America we want in the 21st century. Ours is not a country born of fear. Ensuring it does not become so is why I am running for President.
That is why I have pledged to do everything in my power to prevent this immunity bill from becoming law. If the retroactive immunity clause is not stricken from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, I will filibuster it on the floor of the United States Senate.
President Bush believes he needs all this to keep us secure. I couldn't disagree more. Our courts have conducted more than one hundred terrorism trials since 9/11. They have done this without compromising the intelligence sources that keep us safe.
Consider the trial of Zaccarias Moussaoui. Lt. Cmdr. Swift is especially convincing on this point. President Bush's enablers, he writes, have "cited the prosecution of Zaccarias Moussaoui as an example of why the federal justice system does not work."
Lt. Cmdr. Swift writes, "I completely disagree. In fact, Moussaoui is the perfect victory. Our system is shown to be fair. The court...struck a balance that protects both our values and our security. We didn't lose anything. Moussaoui ultimately showed himself to be a fool--deranged, a joke, hardly someone that we'd think of as a great Middle East martyr. Ultimately he's imprisoned in a place where his name will be forgotten forever. How is that not a great victory?"
Compare that case to the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who organized the attacks of 9/11. He was held in a secret prison, where he claims he was tortured severely. Whether he is lying or not, by our actions we have allowed Khalid Mohammed to claim the moral high ground. Khalid Mohammed plays martyr to a world that is inclined to believe it.
Torture does not work.
Listen to the concerns of Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, said: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices." This is not some newly discovered conclusion - we have known this for years.
What happened in 2002? That was the year a man named Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda paramilitary trainer, was tortured at our behest in Egypt. He confessed that Saddam Hussein trained al-Qaeda members in the use of weapons of mass destruction. That so-called confession found its way into a speech that President Bush gave in October 2002, as part of his case to invade Iraq.
Remember the President's words: "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases." In Colin Powell's speech to the Security Council justifying war, al-Libi's claim was the centerpiece.
It was also totally false.
Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have found that it was a false confession elicited by torture.
What followed in Iraq has been a failure and a tragedy.
Torture makes us less secure - leading us to act on false information.
Torture puts our troops in danger--subjecting them to similar treatment if captured.
John McCain, who experienced torture firsthand, has made this point more movingly than anyone.
Torture excels at breeding terrorists, men who will seek vengeance on us for the rest of their lives, along with their families, and their tribes.
Torture doesn't stop terrorists - it makes them.
Contrast today's world with World War Two and the moral standing we earned in its wake. When the war was over at last, we had in our power the leaders of a monstrous regime, which had nearly conquered the world and tried to exterminate the Jewish people. Rather than summary execution as Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union wanted, America argued to put them on trial, at Nuremberg.
For America, there were no exceptions to the rule of law.
We insisted that even these, some of the worst violators of human rights in history, would have an attorney, a judge and a trial. My father was an American prosecutor at Nuremberg.
Justice Robert Jackson captured the essence of Nuremberg in one sentence in his opening statement: "That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."
More than ever, that tribute is due today. All we need is leadership and the strength to keep faith with our values.
We are so fortunate in America that so many men and women in our armed forces have that strength. William Quinn was an Army interrogator in Iraq in 2005. He sat across the table from insurgents who built the roadside bombs that killed his comrades, and members of al-Qaeda dedicated to war against America.
William Quinn wrote that every instinct in his body was telling him to throw men like that up against the wall and break their noses. But he mastered those instincts and learned, he said, "never to dehumanize my enemy."
Getting this right begins with Presidential leadership that understands how to keep America safe and secure. After 9/11, President Bush asked the American people not to sacrifice or band together but to "go shopping." Today in Iowa City, I am asking the American people something different.
I am asking you not to just trust me - but more importantly, to also trust yourselves.
Not simply to trust your government but to trust the values that government kept us safe with for more than two centuries. Values that steeled America through world wars and cold wars every bit as great as those we face today.
We will confront our enemies with everything we have: a military that is unmatched; intelligence services that are modernized and international alliances that meet the challenges of the 21st century. We will use tough, smart interrogation that extracts the truth. And we will use our moral example.
We Americans understand it is not always the example of our force that keeps us safe - but rather the force of our example. We understand that our leaders do not swear to support and defend the Constitution or protect the country - that is a false choice.
Rather, we defend the Constitution--and the values it expresses--precisely to protect the country. America's moral authority isn't incidental to our security - it's the very foundation. Restoring our belief in this most fundamental of American principles is the challenge we face today.
And so, I ask Iowa today - can we?
The whole world is waiting for our answer.
Learn more at ChrisDodd.com.
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Senator Dodd,
When you and your fellow campaigners didn't show up for the Mukasey vote, it seems to me you abandonned principle and the Constitution both - and the American people with it. I'm terribly disappointed in all of you.
Senator Dodd,
You've got my vote in the California primary. I've watched all the debates with an open mind, and you are more and more persuasive as the guy who has the experience and the willingness to say what you believe.
Senator Dodd, I am completely in agreement with your statements, as I usually am. But that does not fill me with hope when every new day yields another opportunity for the Democratic party to give away more civil liberties, hand over another hundred billion or so to the Bush Family and their friends, help Bush implement a police state in the US, and help Cheney start his next for-profit war of conquest.
It all looks like a charade being acted out for the news media: a group of Democrats spouting verbiage which sounds like "we oppose the war in Iraq, we favor the rule of law, and we're going to defend the Constitution", then actually voting to the contrary.
When voters put Democrats in office in 2006, it was to OPPOSE the dismantling of our Constitution, NOT to give the budding tyrants MORE public funds to waste, immunity from all prosecution for them and their pals, a blank check to invade any and all countries which could be looted profitably, a license to spy on US citizens without warrant, and free-rein to kidnap, torture, imprison indefinitely or murder anyone who impedes their progress. The Democrats have made the national crisis worse by failing to do the right thing at every single turn!
Prove to us that you are serious in your opposition, Senator Dodd. You said you'd hold or filibuster legislation which enables Cheney-Bush to continue their crime spree. Now let's see you do it; it's time to walk that walk.
To all Chris Dodd supporters, let me preface by saying I'm not one. I'm a Joe Biden supporter. However, we have a shared cause. The media's coverage of the 2008 presidential election has thus far been shameful. It's one thing to focus mostly on the top tier candidates - I can understand that. But when debates come around, it is absolutely not ethical to give so few questions and such little time to candidates not labeled in the top tier, despite their qualifications being much more serious than those that are. Please take a second to sign our petition.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Equal-Time-for-Candidates.
And please, pass it on to your friends and family.
I have a lot of respect for Chris Dodd, who unlike some other candidates, actually answers a question now and again, and reveals his position on tough issues rather than being afraid of offending people.
You've got my vote and my support. No Hillary, Billary, Doc for me. If waterboarding is slow suffocating to death her candidacy is slow triangulating to death. We need defenders of our Democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law not a bunch of equivocators.
By the way, Reid's planning to override your hold on the bill that gives Telecoms immunity ex post facto, even though it's against Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution. Kind of tells you where Sen. Reid is at on Constitutional issues, doesn't it. So your battle is against the leader of your own party. Good luck and keep making noise. We've got your back.
The United States of America is our Constitution. We live in North America, but America is the U.S. Constitution and best known for the seperation of powers and Bill of Rights.
Senator,
Are you reading any of these comments?
Are you seeing just how dissatisfied we all are with the Democratic party? How they talk tuff but always cave when push comes to pull?
So tell us.
ARE YOU READING THESE COMMENTS?
If you expect is to stand with you then tell us you are and then stand up and refuse to allow bills to pass that are giving the Bush criminal cabal a pass constantly.
The Imperial Presidency MUST be brought to heel or the next president will be just as arrogant and I have no doubt that if a Thug party member gets elected he will make Bush look like a piker.
If Hillary gets elected she won't change a damned thing because being president is more important to her than taking a stand for the Constitution.(I always capitalize it) And she is terrified of the rightwing hate radio more than she is of voters.
So tell us Senator, are you reading these comments and what do you have to say about the feelings of so many who thing and believe (with reason) the Democratic party is a coward's paradise?
Our nation was founded upon principles of a free republic and democracy. We have laws which guarantee civil, legal and human rights. It is unfortunate our administration has chosen to circumvent, re-define, ignore or willfully violate the Rule of Law: Geneva convention and international human rights, as well as our own Constitution which they swore to defend and preserve. This constitutes treason, and those who violated their oath of office should be impeached and tried as criminals.
Breaking the law is punishable. The person or groups (corporations like AT&T, Verizon, Blackwater, etc) who colluded in these acts should be tried as criminals. They are not entitled to the immunity, pardons or amnesty they denied others during the commission of their crimes.
The threat of terrorism is quite real. It is within our government. Since the administration took office, they began conducting illegal surveillance upon citizens. With all that information, the FBI field reports about suspects training on flight simulators in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, the goverment should and could have prevented the tragic attacks on 9/11. The administration on Aug. 6, 2001 had memos and briefs in hand about the activities of Abbas and others, yet shrugged them off. Yet the lies of "Curveball," ill-gotten information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed (under torture) which proved to be false coupled with the phony anthrax scare (it was dispensed from US military basis), was used, publicized and became the basis for our invading Iraq.
BTW, international law prohibits any nation from invading another soveriegn nation for the purposes of gaining control of its resources. The moment the administration took office, Cheney had executives from oil corporations at the White House to review maps of Iraq, including geological surveys, oil fields and prospective drilling/pipeline sites. This alone makes him an international war criminal.
Today I read a simple little piece in the History Channel magazine while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room. From it I learned that Jefferson was given the assignment to write the Declaration of Independence because of the mere fact that he was believed to be the best writer in the whole assembly.
It is not striking that he was the best writer, or that he was chosen to write it for that reason. What is striking is that without that one man, 33 years old, that the compelling arguments of independence might not have rung through to the people.
We face a time, in many degrees, similar to the times in which Jefferson’s week long project, to write the Declaration of Independence, was engaged.
Maybe it was fate that he was there. But that no such person exists today, that can distill the arguments of a thousand fine minds into a beautiful instrument of common purpose, does not seem possible, given the depth and breadth of our experience since he lived.
Who among us could do such a thing now? As I read and comment here, I hope to find those minds that can lift up the process of evil and examine it, dispassionately, and conclude what must be done to render it infertile. But Senator Dodd, these thousands that protest need a Jefferson to combine, coalesce and condense the sense of common purpose that has eluded all to date.
Is there a Jefferson out there? And I don’t mean a William Jefferson…
The Congress caved LONG before last year, Mr. Dodd.
And every Congressman has known that the FISA and the torture issue are already solved and set in law as ILLEGAL. Yet, we've got commission after commission, hearing after hearing, debate after debate of grandstanding over things already solved for them. Apparently false pride and grandstanding has taken over for enacting the law and defending the Constitution. Apparently "holding this lawless and reckless Administration accountable" has gone the way of others that Congress only pull out for political baiting like: immigration, ending the war, earmarks, alternative energy sources, oil companies...
Lots of words, lots of promises.... and, unfortunately, the record of action unveils a different picture.
The Constitution is not a faceless plaque for Congressmen to dust off when it's politically favorable. Word-a-plenty in the Constitution as well that Congress seems to have forgotten reading and oathing themselves to protect. One of which is the word "impeachment" which, for some reason, these same Congressmen have chosen to shelve....basically took it upon themselves to amend the people's Constitution without as much as a debate, and without vote.
7 years of these unsuccessful battles, ...Buckets upon buckets of Democratic Party whine overfloweth,...
Solving anything isn't the plan is it, Mr. Dodd? To solve wouldn't be fruitful. Divisiveness is where the money comes... donate, donate, donate... give the illusion you're doing something, but only go far enough to keep the donations rolling in for a fruitful election season. It's Christmas for Congress and Groundhog's Day for the people...
The routine's tired, Mr. Dodd. We're tired. The time for action was yesterday. Time to put up or shut up has long been and long waiting...
Do what you should've done at least 5 years ago and didn't. Put Pelosi and Hoyer's feet to the fire. Stop the BS and gaming. Put impeachment on the table. Put your faith in the people. Put your faith in the Constitution... ACTUALLY uphold it....
Until then, you're words are like white noise in a white room to add to the growing white lies pile.
Um, that's great, Chris, but where do you stand
on impeachment? If you feel that the law has
been deliberately broken, which would be one
interpretation of the word 'crime', and it's
been broken by someone/more than one person or
people in this administration, how will you
stand if the question of impeachment comes?
I think that the question OF Germany is relevant
to this, as under Hitler's nazi regime there
was a 'sorting out' of the population not
unlike some of the stuff we're seeing today.
What's the current slogan, there, 'identify,
divide, and conquer'? How about that illegal
search and seizure stuff? When you held your
hand up, you promised to uphold the
Constitution, are those just pretty words or
what, exactly? I declare MY belief that the
actions of this administration not only
fail in that regard, but can also be fairly
stated to have strayed into the realm of
possible high crimes and misdemeanors, which
means it's time for guys n gals like YOU to
actually do whatever it is you do for 180k/yr
instead of just using it as political rhetoric
to set yourself up for a run for the Big Chair.
Did you like, jump up and down and protest
when they started hauling people off to Gitmo
and points unknown, or did you just kind of
sit there and eat doughnuts and gripe about it?
We hear lots of words, lots of speeches from
lots of people, my support right now goes
for Kucinich and a guy named Ron Paul, because
as far as I'm able to discern, both of those
gentlemen seem to be steering pretty close
to the mark.
If you should happen to concur with my opinion,
then please visit and consider the merit of
the website below, or equivalent:
http://www.impeachbush.org
Senator, I love reading your recent comments but a depressing thought always comes at the end: where were you during the last seven years when you could have made a difference?
Eloquently expressed Senator Dodd, eloquently expressed indeed.
Dear Senator:
I have lost all faith in your party. Time and time again I am disappointed by your failure to stand up for the constitution. I hear your lofty speeches BLAH BLAH BLAH and then when it's time to act you roll over and play dead. This is exactly what's happening with Micheal Mukasey's confirmation as U.S. AG. The big dust-up over the waterboarding issue, almost no debate regarding his views on expanding executive power. Then today's fiasco over the Cheney's impeachment vote, I don't know how I could have expected it to have played out any differently. What a fool I am! I sincerely hope the your party sinks under the weight of it's own spineless incompetence. Let the republicans win again......you deserve no better!
Senator Dodd,
Thank you for bringing up one of the most important issues of our time.
If we are not free we are not America. The USA has NEVER been as free as the Constitution states.
We have lost more freedom in the last six then we had in the last 60.
Americans must have 100% freedom over themselves; people can put in and take out of their brains and bodies whatever they choose.
The USA also needs to adopt the European standard of privacy as regards personal information. In Europe a person owns absolutely any info about themselves . This needs to be made law in the USA.
presidential signing statements must also become illegal.
Also money must be removed from politics and paid lobbyists must also be outlawed.
The Framers intended for individuals to lobby the government not for corporations to pay people to pervert our government.
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