Like many of you, I am signed up since the presidential campaign to David Plouffe's "BarackObama.com" newsletter. Every once in a while I get a letter asking me to donate time, money or both to support the President's agenda, most of which I support. However, I am finding it increasingly difficult to muster any enthusiasm to invest effort in a President that is pissing me off more and more by the day. So I hit the reply button, not seeing a "do not reply to this email" thingie, and maybe, just maybe, someone will read it. Please do copy, paste and send it too if you agree. The email is info@barackobama.com. Here is the short letter I sent:
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Dear Mr. President, Mr. Plouffe,
We want answers on the State's Secrets, on the photos and on the military commissions. We want them now and we want them in a manner that does not grossly contradict the President's professed positions of up to and including the duration of the campaign - as the few answers provided thus far have done.
Please do NOT make the mistake of thinking you can count on us to keep propelling the machine that brought you to power without some answers forthwith. This is NOT why we supported the President. We will not support the assault on the rule of law and civil rights - not by a stupid and vacuous man like George W. Bush, and not by a brilliant man for whose principles we had such high hopes, such as the 44th President. Provide candid answers or see your most loyal and enthusiastic troops turning on you.
Awaiting your reply.
With much respect,
Rechavia Berman
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Like I said, please do send it yourselves. Maybe a hundred copies will make some impression. Forward to whoever you know and if you feel like it*, digg and reddit.
* I qualify because I suck at that kind of promotion myself, so I can't really demand it of others. But if it's something you do and you agree with the above, by all means please do.


Salon.com
Comments
I get these too. I'll try a similar reply next time.
He has received reams of emails from me re: health insurance.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, send this to your representatives. I don't know a one that doesn't use email.
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President Obama:
If you are to give us true change, as you promised so often during your campaign, it is imperative that you return the United States to the rule of law. As more and more evidence accumulates showing that the Bush Administration used torture as a matter of policy, that the CIA destroyed evidence of that torture, and that the President, Vice-President and Secretary of Defense, among others, were directly responsible for that policy, your Administration is legally obligated to investigate these actions and prosecute them.
You have talked about not wanting to "look back," but we can't move forward as a respected part of the community of nations if we do not hold criminal behavior to account. If your Department of Justice does not investigate war crimes, starting with the war on Iraq, it is as guilty—according to treaty and US law—as the actual perpetrators.
General Anthony Taguba said "the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture."
Anne Applebaum, not a radical left-winger by any definition, had this to say: "Sooner or later, we will also have to hold accountable the American leaders who ordered American citizens to torture prisoners who were captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere, in violation both of our Constitution and of international conventions we ratified long ago."
Bush 41 U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Reagan FBI Director William Sessions wrote in Monday's Washington Post under this headline: "Moving Forward by Looking Back: Why a Presidential Commission on Torture Is Critical to America's Security"
While Pickering and Sessions do not call for prosecution, they do speak to the necessity of facing what happened, rather than sweeping it under a rug labeled "policy differences."
As a Constitutional scholar, as our president—who took an oath "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"—you MUST start this process.
The American people want investigations. According to a mid-February USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, "Close to two-thirds of those surveyed said there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants."
Please, Mr. President, tell Attorney General Holder to start this process immediately. Because, until these crimes are dealt with, the United States remains a rogue nation.
Thank you.
But thanks.
So who will you vote for in 2012?