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Last Updated on June 23, 2017.

 
When I read the news yesterday about the nominee to be the Department of Transportation’s top lawyer [1], I was furious, but I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised because, unfortunately, there has been almost no accountability for the architects of George Bush’s torture machine. When no one gets punished, things don’t change.
That’s why we’re so fired up about stopping Steven Bradbury’s nomination [2].
It’s probably a little strange to be getting an email from Win Without War about the nominee for the Department of Transportation’s top lawyer. We admit, we’re normally much more focused on America’s war machine than we are on our nation’s transportation infrastructure. But Steven Bradbury — one of the chief architects of Bush’s torture program — has no business serving anywhere in the federal government.
The Trump Administration thinks that we’re not paying attention. Bradbury thinks that he can rehabilitate his career by sneaking back into government somewhere outside of the national security system. We can’t let that happen.
Let’s stand up and tell the Senate the architects of torture have no place in the federal government.
During the Bush years, Bradbury provided bogus legal cover for a number of illegal torture techniques [3], including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, slapping, and forcing detainees to wear diapers [4]. Without Bradbury’s ok, some of the worst abuses of the Bush Administration may never have happened.
The Senate Intelligence Committee spent years investigating Bush’s torture program and definitively declared that not only was it immoral, it did not work. Despite the facts that America gained nothing for mortgaging its moral standing by utilizing torture, Bradbury has continued to defend torture.
Now we have a chance to do something that has proven illusive through the years, hold one of the architects of torture accountable. With a President who has promised to “bring back torture,” it’s more important than ever that we not reward Steve Bradbury with a new job and send a clear message rejecting torture once and for all.
Sign the petition to tell the Senate that the architects of torture don’t belong in our government.
Together, we have defeated some of the worst nominees of the Trump Administration. We helped keep Mark Green and his anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT views out of the U.S. Army. We helped get Steve Bannon kicked off the National Security Council. Now it’s time to do it again.
Sources:
[1] In Yemen’s secret prisons, UAE tortures and US interrogates 6/22/17
[2] Trump Will Nominate ‘Torture Memo’ Lawyer To Transportation Post 6/6/17
[3] Explaining and Authorizing Specific Interrogation Techniques 3/17/09
[4] CIA torture tactics: What the terms really mean 12/10/14
 

June 23, 2017