This message is extremely urgent.

Last week, President Bush on national television defended cruel and humiliating treatment of detainees and proposed legislation that would legalize the sham military commissions that the Supreme Court has repudiated. Equally outrageous, he wants to grant immunity from prosecution to administration officials who sanctioned the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. And furthermore, he aims to prohibit the Federal courts from intervening on these crucial human rights issues.

With this brazen move, President Bush has launched an all-out assault on human rights and the rule of law. Torture? Secret prisons? Unfair trials? Impunity for law breakers? This is not the America we believe in. The America we believe in does not use torture. The America we believe in would never hide people in secret prisons. The America we believe in leads the world on human rights.

With events moving so quickly we must have your immediate participation. Please take action right now.

If President Bush gets his way, Congress will soon pass laws giving impunity for past abuses of human rights. He wants Congress to permanently sanction the government's ability to launch rogue operations outside all human rights standards. And he wants Congress to respond to the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision by legalizing unfair trials, something more appropriate for a dictatorship than for a great democracy.

With everything that we work for and believe on the line, we need you and the entire Amnesty community to mobilize to stop this. We will be in regular contact to update you with new actions that you can take as part of our response to this dramatic escalation of the Administration's assault on human rights. Every single one of us needs to stand up for the America We Believe In.

Please act with the urgency and sense of purpose that President Bush's full-scale assault on human rights demands.

Sincerely,

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA