Dear Senator:

Last week your colleague Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said the following of memos written or signed-off on by attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzalez that condoned the use of any almost type of torture on terrorist suspects short of those inflicting pain equal to organ removal:

"When you start looking at torture statutes and you look at ways around the spirit of the law, you're losing the moral high ground. I do believe that we've lost our way."

So do I. So do millions of other Americans. And yet I read that the Senate is poised to confirm Gonzalez by a comfortable margin. A man who endorsed documents calling the Geneva Conventions quaint and outdated is rewarded by being made this country's chief law enforcement officer. Need I say that I will be sickened if you vote to approve this nomination.

History will judge not only what we say and do during our lifetimes but what we didn't say and didn't do. I'm stunned that more members of Congress have not condemned the Gonzalez nomination and the disingenuous release in recent days of statements reversing his original memos -- after they'd been in effect for more than two years.

Like the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war and the unprovoked and hastily conceived invasion and occupation of Iraq, tolerance of Mr. Gonzalez?s ghastly views signals a further erosion of respect for the rule of law.

This past week total coalition troop deaths in Iraq surpassed the 1,500 mark, including 1,354 Americans. The names of the most recent to lose their lives for a geopolitical theory appears on the following pages. Where will it end? When are you going to stand up and say, "The answer to a problem of violence is not to apply greater violence?" If the best response our government can come up with to murder by terrorists is torture and assassination, then these dismal times are only the beginning of something much darker.

With great concern and on behalf of Michiana Peace & Justice Coalition,

Ed Cohen