Dear MoveOn member,

It's time to raise the stakes in our demand that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be fired. We need your help today to put a powerful new TV ad on the air.

We now know Rumsfeld personally approved a policy that "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners," violating their fundamental human rights under the Geneva convention.1 Our new ad will help make sure everyone in the country knows about Rumsfeld’s direct responsibility for the prisoner debacle, but to air it we need your help. Here's the script:

The screen pans slowly up the Statue of Liberty, ultimately revealing that her head is hooded. The narrator says:

"They said we were going to Iraq to bring American values: democracy, liberty, justice. But something has gone terribly wrong."

"It's been reported that Donald Rumsfeld initiated a plan that encouraged the physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners, violations of international law. Rumsfeld has placed the men under his command in even more danger."

"Why hasn't George Bush fired this man?"

Click here to help us put this ad on the air:

https://www.moveon.org/hooded/

New evidence of Rumsfeld's responsibility for the torture at Abu Ghraib prison is surfacing daily,2 and on Tuesday his top deputy admitted seriously miscalculating the Iraqis' willingness to put up with the American occupation.3 Yet President Bush still refuses to remove Rumsfeld from his post.

Although Bush has apologized to the world for the torture, every day Rumsfeld keeps his job sends the opposite message -- that Americans don't mind all that much.

Every day Rumsfeld stays, Iraq grows more volatile, increasing the danger to our troops. Every day he stays, Iraqis who work with us are killed, recently including the president of the Iraqi Governing Council. And every day Rumsfeld stays, potential terrorists harden in their anger toward America. Yet, in the face of this snowballing disaster, Bush's posture boils down to an arrogant "so what?".

It's time to make our demand for accountability impossible for Bush to ignore. We're taking our campaign to the next level, beginning with this TV ad. We'll also run radio and print ads soon, and next week we'll hold constituent meetings with dozens of key Senate and House offices, calling for Rumsfeld's ouster.

Michael Berg, whose son Nicholas was recently beheaded in Iraq, said: "I can't stand even more than those murderers who took my son's life, those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living."4

We need your help today to jump-start our campaign to fire Rumsfeld. Click here to help get our ads on the air:

https://www.moveon.org/hooded/

Every time we ask for your help, you step up. Thank you, more than we can say.

Sincerely,
--Carrie, Joan, Noah, Peter, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
Thursday, May 20th, 2004

Footnotes:

1. THE GRAY ZONE, How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

2. These recent stories reinforce this:
Soldier Says Intelligence Directed Abuse
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/international/middleeast/20ABUS.html?hp
Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/politics/19PAPP.html

3. Washington Post: U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure: Wolfowitz Concedes Errors as Damage Control Continues

4. Statement of Michael Berg, father of Nicholas Berg, to the U.K.'s Stop The War Coalition, May 16th, 2004