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It’s too bad the position of the Attorney General of the United States is so vital to the legal, moral and psychological health of the country. After all, if it wasn’t so important, maybe we could just do without one for the next four years.
That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn as we watch the confirmation process in the United States Senate for Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General. Whenever the best candidate you can find for a law enforcement position has had to promise not to willfully and egregiously break the law and ignore worldwide standards for human rights, maybe the job should simply be left empty for a while.
Gonzales, as you know, was picked by Bush to head up the Justice Department’s Attorney General Office following news that the current officeholder, John Ashcroft, was stepping down. Throughout his four years on the job, Ashcroft himself managed to set new standards in ignoring human rights, detaining suspects indefinitely, and otherwise flouting the law, particularly when it came to Muslim immigrants and suspected terrorists in the wake of Sept. 11.
Of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of Muslims and Arabs living in the U.S. who were rounded up at his direction and held indefinitely in the weeks and months following the attacks, for example, not a single conviction was ever brought, nor a single terrorist plot uncovered. Such a dismal success rate didn’t stop Ashcroft from arguing that other suspects, such as alleged “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, be detained indefinitely in a secret location without right to counsel or charges even brought against him.
But if John Ashcroft failed to make friends with such essential American ideals as the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, then Alberto Gonzales has declared war on them. In his capacity as general legal council for the Bush White House, it was Gonzales who helped develop the justification to use torture on prisoners captured by American soldiers, which in turn led to the prison abuse scandals of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.
In a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002 and others, Gonzales, serving as the president’s legal counsel, argued that prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan could be tortured in order to extract intelligence information from them, despite such methods being explicitly banned by such international laws as the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights. Arguing that America’s Global War on Terror exempted it from the rules, the memos encouraged the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including stripping prisoners naked, threatening them with attack dogs, depriving them of food and sleep and staging mock burials.
And despite protests worldwide, additional revelations of abuse beyond Abu Ghraib and incalculable damage to the reputation of the United States, neither Gonzales nor anyone in the Bush administration, including the President himself, has ever admitted to sanctioning torture, promising to stop its use, or even acknowledged problems in the shadowy, worldwide prison system America has built around the world since Sept. 11.
Instead, Bush, Gonzales and others have tried to sweep allegations of torture and abuse under the rug by blaming them on soldiers in the field or ignoring them, as if to suggest such questions are unpatriotic. And, for the most part, the strategy has worked.
But enough of an outcry has been generated that Gonzales – a candidate for the highest law enforcement position in the land – was forced this week to publicly promise that if he’s confirmed, he would be “committed to preserving civil rights and civil liberties” and would “abide by international commitments” banning torture. All this at the same time the White House announced that it was refusing to release copies of the original memos Gonzales authored on the subject as part of the confirmation process, and amid new reports that the Pentagon was opening an investigation into still more charges of prisoner abuse, this time at the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Since President Bush is known as a chief executive who is fond of having insiders run his administration, and has been accused of choosing cabinet secretaries and policy advisors who are loyal and compliant, it is no surprise that he chose someone who currently worked for him to fill a vacant position.
And if its loyalty and compliance the president wants then what could be better than leaving the Attorney General’s position vacant for the next four years? Granted, there might be other important tasks that the Attorney General is responsible for, such as enforcing federal civil laws, prosecuting environmental scofflaws and investigating corporate crime that could fall by the wayside. In the long run, however, the president could get what he wants, and pesky questions about whether or not the basic human rights of prisoners were being violated in the name of the American people would go away.
The alternative could hardly be worse.
That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn as we watch the confirmation process in the United States Senate for Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General. Whenever the best candidate you can find for a law enforcement position has had to promise not to willfully and egregiously break the law and ignore worldwide standards for human rights, maybe the job should simply be left empty for a while.
Gonzales, as you know, was picked by Bush to head up the Justice Department’s Attorney General Office following news that the current officeholder, John Ashcroft, was stepping down. Throughout his four years on the job, Ashcroft himself managed to set new standards in ignoring human rights, detaining suspects indefinitely, and otherwise flouting the law, particularly when it came to Muslim immigrants and suspected terrorists in the wake of Sept. 11.
Of the hundreds or perhaps thousands of Muslims and Arabs living in the U.S. who were rounded up at his direction and held indefinitely in the weeks and months following the attacks, for example, not a single conviction was ever brought, nor a single terrorist plot uncovered. Such a dismal success rate didn’t stop Ashcroft from arguing that other suspects, such as alleged “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, be detained indefinitely in a secret location without right to counsel or charges even brought against him.
But if John Ashcroft failed to make friends with such essential American ideals as the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, then Alberto Gonzales has declared war on them. In his capacity as general legal council for the Bush White House, it was Gonzales who helped develop the justification to use torture on prisoners captured by American soldiers, which in turn led to the prison abuse scandals of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.
In a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002 and others, Gonzales, serving as the president’s legal counsel, argued that prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan could be tortured in order to extract intelligence information from them, despite such methods being explicitly banned by such international laws as the Geneva Conventions on Human Rights. Arguing that America’s Global War on Terror exempted it from the rules, the memos encouraged the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including stripping prisoners naked, threatening them with attack dogs, depriving them of food and sleep and staging mock burials.
And despite protests worldwide, additional revelations of abuse beyond Abu Ghraib and incalculable damage to the reputation of the United States, neither Gonzales nor anyone in the Bush administration, including the President himself, has ever admitted to sanctioning torture, promising to stop its use, or even acknowledged problems in the shadowy, worldwide prison system America has built around the world since Sept. 11.
Instead, Bush, Gonzales and others have tried to sweep allegations of torture and abuse under the rug by blaming them on soldiers in the field or ignoring them, as if to suggest such questions are unpatriotic. And, for the most part, the strategy has worked.
But enough of an outcry has been generated that Gonzales – a candidate for the highest law enforcement position in the land – was forced this week to publicly promise that if he’s confirmed, he would be “committed to preserving civil rights and civil liberties” and would “abide by international commitments” banning torture. All this at the same time the White House announced that it was refusing to release copies of the original memos Gonzales authored on the subject as part of the confirmation process, and amid new reports that the Pentagon was opening an investigation into still more charges of prisoner abuse, this time at the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Since President Bush is known as a chief executive who is fond of having insiders run his administration, and has been accused of choosing cabinet secretaries and policy advisors who are loyal and compliant, it is no surprise that he chose someone who currently worked for him to fill a vacant position.
And if its loyalty and compliance the president wants then what could be better than leaving the Attorney General’s position vacant for the next four years? Granted, there might be other important tasks that the Attorney General is responsible for, such as enforcing federal civil laws, prosecuting environmental scofflaws and investigating corporate crime that could fall by the wayside. In the long run, however, the president could get what he wants, and pesky questions about whether or not the basic human rights of prisoners were being violated in the name of the American people would go away.
The alternative could hardly be worse.