What About Bush's Moral Values In Nominating Gonzales For AG?
by Steve Soto
According to the AP just now, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has been selected by Bush to replace John Ashcroft as Bush’s second Attorney General. If so, his confirmation hearings will be a reminder to many of what the Bush Administration did wrong in allowing Abu Ghraib to happen. Why?
Because it was Gonzales that wrote the widely-disputed legal opinion that justified Bush’s rejection of the Geneva Convention protocols in the treatment of Afghan and Taliban prisoners, and he crafted an argument aimed at shielding Bush and the military command from war crimes prosecutions.
As Phillip Carter wrote in the November 2004 Washington Monthly:
They (the Administration) began with the plausible argument that the Geneva Conventions were anachronistic in an age of asymmetrical, non-state warfare. Al Qaeda didn't wear uniforms or fight according to the laws of war, they reasoned, and so they were not necessarily entitled to the conventions' protections. But the lawyers—including White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Defense Department general counsel William Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's counsel David Addington, and Jay Bybee of the Justice Department (who now sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)—went further. They advised the president to sign a blanket statement of policy that the men captured in Afghanistan would not be subject to the Geneva Conventions, and that by executive fiat, they would all be declared “unlawful enemy combatants,” a category that does not exist in international law. White House, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers also pushed President Bush to sign a secret finding on Feb. 7, 2002, that would have far-reaching consequences for the nation and the world. “I… determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world,” this document determined, adding that the White House also had “the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time.” For all intents and purposes, these memoranda gutted the Geneva Conventions.
You can also be sure that hooking Gonzales up as AG in a second term to serve alongside Rummy will be the final straw in pushing Colin Powell out the door. Given how shocked various GOP senators were in seeing what transpired at Abu Ghraib, and knowing how upset even John Warner is at being stonewalled by the Pentagon and the White House over his requests for information on Abu Ghraib, it's easy to see how the Democrats can form alliances with GOP moderates to strongly fight any Gonzales nomination to the highest law enforcement post in the land.
If John Warner and Lindsey Graham are that concerned about the Abu Ghraib debacle, and if John McCain shares Colin Powell's revulsion at the trashing of the Geneva Convention protocols and what it means for American POWs from here on out, how can any of these three vote for the architect of that legal doctrine to be our AG? Sure, the White House will replay the Miguel Estrada red herring that any vote against Gonzales is a vote against Hispanics, but that is garbage, and the Democrats need to immediately begin drumming the message that a vote for Gonzales is a vote for Abu Ghraib.
It also doesn't help Bush's cause that Gonzales was counsel for Enron as well. My, my, what moral values are on display now?
I mean, if the GOP can bounce Clinton's AG choices Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird because they didn't pay Social Security taxes on domestic help, then I guess Democrats can work to bounce Bush's choice for his role in perpetrating war crimes, right? I mean, isn't there some equivalence there folks?
Update: This nomination will be the gift that keeps on giving. There is much more than can blow up in Bush’s face at the confirmation hearings for this supposedly moral values administration.
As one example, commenter TR points out Gonzales’ flagrant withholding of pertinent information from then-Governor Bush in scores of death penalty cases while he and W were executing folks right and left. Does the GOP really want to force its moral values base to confront its support for the death penalty while claiming to be good Christians, especially if the nominee participated in such deviousness?
Second, what would Gonzales’ confirmation as AG do to the Plame investigation, given that he has already been dragged in to testify?
Third, while serving as a justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales took money from firms with litigation pending before his court, including Halliburton.
Also, guess who helped W escape jury duty in Texas while governor so that he wouldn’t be forced to reveal his 1970’s DUI years before a White House run? Claim a prize if you answered the nominee, from the moral values administration.