Disbarment of Bush-Cheney’s Torture Lawyers?
Two orginizations are seeking the disbarment of Bush-era lawyers. Voters For Peace asks you to sign their petition:
I am writing you to urge you to hold torturers, their enablers and those who formulated the policy accountable to the rule of law. Three steps are needed:
1. Lawyers who used their license to practice law to facilitate torture should be disbarred. This includes 12 Bush-Cheney lawyers: John Yoo, Judge Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury who authored the torture memoranda. As well as attorneys who advised, counseled, consulted and supported those memoranda including Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Michael Mukasey, Timothy Flanigan, and David Addington.
2. The Congress should hold hearings that publicly investigate torture. This should include much more detail about what the torture was used for. Recent reports indicate that torture was used to gather information, false information, to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Hearings should also discover who formulated the torture policy and how lawyers manipulated the law to provide false legal cover for torture.
3. Appoint a special prosecutor. The issue of torture needs to be removed from partisan politics and the rule of law needs to be applied. The only way to do this is with an independent prosecutor who will gather the facts and apply the law to torture.
Application of the rule of law, beginning with disbarment and followed by appointment of a special prosecutor, along with public airing of all aspects of the torture policy are all necessary parts of the process of healing the nation and putting these war crimes behind us.