Gonzales approval a baleful sign

Though it was doomed, the Democrats for once mounted a dissent


Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed gave an impressive speech in opposition to the torture theorist Wednesday on the floor of the US Senate.


Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, until recently Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary, provided squirrelly mendacity against the dissenters and in support of Gonzales.

Yet another assertion of Republican impunity has confirmed Alberto Gonzales as America's highest law enforcer, who took over the US Department of Justice today. Heaven help the sundry persons detained without evidence in the president's Terror War. Accountability for illegal rendition, torture, humiliation, perpetual confinement without charge or evidence, and other atrocities committed by US military and contract personnel will reach only as far as a few low-ranking soldiers – and then only when there are pictures. No torture policy architect will pay any price. Instead, being the chief legal theorist for torture results in promotion.

It is good that there was principled Democratic dissent, which forced squirrelly Republican mendacity in response. I thank Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, Jack Reed, Robert Byrd, and other Senate Democrats for making sure there were 36 dissenting lawmakers, thereby showing that not all of the American people believe Bush's lies, approve of his torture practices, and think his high officials that are responsible should be given a free pass.

Without these Democrats, the whole record and story would have ended with the outrageous ear candy in service of cover-up that the Republicans dished up. The public record may have ended with fawnings about how Judge Gonzales "grew up in Humble, TX...one of seven siblings living in a two-bedroom house" that was built by his migrant-laborer family, who lacked education beyond elementary school.

"But Judge Gonzales learned through his parents’ example that, with dreams and commitment and hard work, you can be rewarded in this country."

Yes, and in Bush's America, you are also rewarded -- with the highest office available -- for destroying the law of the land.

So it is very good to have the Republican responses to being called on official support for torture -- how they ran away from the memos, how they repeatedly were forced to feign abhorrence about bad apples and pictures, how they repeatedly said it was proper to carve out a class of presidentially-declared Terror War suspects who then without evidence could be treated outside the bounds of international law, how good faith ruled the roost, and how dissenters undermine the president and "give comfort" to the enemy -- in the permanent record.

But even the slightest perusal of the publicly-available documentation reveals that none of these Republican canards can hold a drop of water. The notion of Republican good faith is put to rest rather thoroughly in a piece by Joshua Dratel posted on Counterpunch a few days ago.

Dratel writes,

The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners:

(1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law;

(2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and

(3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under US and international law.

Indeed, any claim of good faith--that those who formulated the policies were merely misguided in their pursuit of security in the face of what is certainly a genuine terrorist threat--is belied by the policy makers, more than tacit acknowledgment of their unlawful purpose. Otherwise, why the need to find a location--Guantanamo Bay--purportedly outside the jurisdiction of the US (or any other) courts? Why the need to ensure those participating that they could proceed free of concern that they could face prosecution for war crimes as a result of their adherence to the policy? Rarely, if ever, has such a guilty governmental conscience been so starkly illuminated in advance.

Meanwhile, Senator Reed provided a summary of how the Bush/Gonzales theories of "Commander-in-Chief override" of US and international law were developed in order to provide that absolution for the ensuing crimes.

JACK REED: Despite the Constitution's clear prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, despite law after law, treaty after treaty prohibiting torture, the President's chief counsel, Judge Gonzales, requested a series of legal memos regarding the applicability of treaty provisions and permissible interrogation techniques in the war on terrorism.

One of these memos, the August 1, 2002, Bybee Memorandum, was apparently written to explore what coercive tactics U.S. officials could use without being held criminally liable.

This memo created a new and radically narrow definition of torture. It stated that torture would require interrogators to have specific intent to cause physical pain that ``must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.'' Mental torture is defined in the statute but the Justice Department memo states that mental torture must result in ``significant psychological harm lasting for months or even years."

According to Harold Koh, Dean of the Yale Law School, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and an international law expert, this memo is ``the most clearly erroneous legal opinion'' he has ever read. In testimony before the Judiciary Committee he stated:

``In sum, the August 1, 2002 OLC memorandum is a stain upon our law and our national reputation. A legal opinion that is so lacking in historical context, that offers a definition of torture so narrow that it would have exculpated Saddam Hussein, that reads the Commander-in-Chief power so as to remove Congress as a check against torture, that turns Nuremberg on its head, and that gives government officials a license for cruelty can only be described--as my predecessor Eugene Rostow described the Japanese internment cases--as a ``disaster.''

One would have expected the Counsel to the President to have immediately repudiated such an opinion. Judge Gonzales did not.

Instead, this memo was endorsed by Judge Gonzales as the legal opinion of the Justice Department on the standard for torture.

Into the face of this voluminous evidence of official malfeasance on the part of Gonzales -- and the calm and eloquent presentation thereof by the Democrats -- the race-baiting ramblings, emphatic gestures, lies, and full-gallop retreat from the content and foreseeable results of the torture memos by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch would have been comical if the issue wasn't so serious. I'll reproduce quite a bit of the recorded transcript here. Try not to be entertained.

HATCH: Some Senators on the other side of the aisle are desperately searching, fishing, and hunting to find something, anything, with which to attack Judge Alberto Gonzales. I reviewed some of the issues yesterday, including their attempt to hold Judge Gonzales responsible for a memo that he did not write, prepared by an office he did not run, in a Department in which he did not work, that provided legal advice that President Bush did not follow. That argument is a very thin brew. But some of my friends across the aisle are still throwing political spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick.
...
What is it about Judge Gonzales that makes some people believe that he is somehow incapable of making the simple distinctions, distinctions made by lawyers every day? Is it prejudice? Is it a belief that a Hispanic American should never be in a position like this—because he will be the first one ever in a position like this? Is it a belief that only liberal Hispanics should be confirmed? Or is it because he has been an effective Counsel to the President of the United States, who many on the other side do not like? Or is it because he is constantly mentioned for the Supreme Court of the United States of America? Or is it that they just don’t like Judge Gonzales? I find that that is not possible because you can’t help but like him. He is a fine, enjoyable, friendly man.
...
It is ridiculous. What is the reason for this opposition? I don’t know what it is. But I have listed a few things it could be...Senator KENNEDY raised all of these torture memoranda as though Judge Gonzales wrote them. He wasn’t in the Justice Department. He wasn’t in the office of legal counsel. He wasn’t the person who wrote them. He didn’t represent the Justice Department. But he did have a relationship to the February 7, 2002, memorandum where the President said that all prisoners, whether or not they were subject to the Geneva Conventions, had been treated "humanely." People can have different views on the Bybee memoranda, and other memoranda that have been quoted here as though Judge Gonzales had anything to do at all with them, but Judge Gonzales’s opinion, which he gave the President, was that they should be treated humanely. Why do they insist on these points? Why has torture become the big point of debate on the floor of the Senate? There is only one reason: to undermine the President of the United States. Just think about it. Why would we do that publicly as Senators? Why would we do that, especially since we all know that these were rogue elements who have done these awful things? We all condemn them. But why would we do this? Some people think that these statements are so bad, that they give comfort to the enemy. I do not go that far. But why have they used distortions to try to stop Judge Gonzales? Why would they do that? He is a moderate man. He is an accomplished man. He is a decent man. We have had 4 years of experience with him. He has done a great job down there as White House Counsel. He has been up here before every Senator on the Judiciary Committee, eight of whom voted against him, and he accommodated them in every way he possibly could. Sometimes he couldn’t do what they wanted him to do, but the fact is he was always accommodating.
...
Here we have a chance to confirm a man who is a decent man, who is of Hispanic origin, the first Hispanic ever to be nominated to one of the big four Cabinet positions. Why can’t my friends who oppose him recognize that and recognize the historic nature of this nomination, recognize his great ability, recognize his decency, recognize his fairness in working with them, and recognize that this man will make a difference for all Americans, as he has as White House Counsel? Is the hatred for the President so bad they transfer it to somebody as decent as Judge Gonzales after years of complaints about John Ashcroft? He has been a wonderful Attorney General, in my eyes. After years of complaining about him because he is too conservative, all of a sudden you have a moderate Hispanic man who has a distinguished public service record, who has a distinguished career as a lawyer, who came from poverty to the heights of strength and success in this greatest of all nations, and he too gets treated like dirt. And I personally resent it. (emphasis added)

Hatch conveniently forgets the ample evidence that the prisoners have NOT been treated humanely. And what treatment does Gonzales consider "humane"? He would not say in written responses to questions from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

I shudder to think of what is going on right now in America's Terror War dungeons.