philly inquirer editorial this morning.. like several other newspapers..
Editorial | The Gonzales Nomination
A very hard case to make
As White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales signed off on the secret detention and harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects - tactics that include what can only be described as torture.
Rightly condemned around the world after revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, these policies tarnished America's standing as a great beacon of liberty and justice.
The policies have been repudiated, in part, by the U.S. Supreme Court and, belatedly, even by lawyers at the Justice Department that Gonzales is now in line to run.
For American servicemen and women, the Bush administration's rough handling of detainees, as excused by White House legal advice, is more than just a legal issue.
The notion that a nation can exempt itself willy-nilly from the Geneva Conventions and other international laws about treatment of prisoners poses a direct and continuing threat to America's soldiers. If they are taken prisoner during a war, will the other nation feel any hesitation to do unto them as the United States did unto detainees at Abu Ghraib?
With so controversial and troubling a track record, which also includes shoddy work reviewing death penalty cases for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, does Gonzales deserve to be confirmed as attorney general?
It's a very hard case to make.
His nomination today goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, newly chaired by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.
Make no mistake, the President deserves great leeway to shape his cabinet team. Nor is there any question that the Gonzales resume is impressive: Air Force veteran, Harvard-trained lawyer, Texas state official under Bush, a Texas Supreme Court justice, then on to the White House. The achievements of this son of Mexican migrant workers are considerable.
But the U.S. attorney general is not just another cabinet member, there to execute the bidding of the President. The person in this post also is the nation's top law-enforcement officer and chief advocate for citizens' rights under the Constitution. His first loyalty should be to justice and the law, not the president who hired him.
No "Top 10" list of candidates for this post should include a lawyer who argued that the President had nearly untrammeled right to indefinitely detain terror suspects - U.S. citizen or no - without charge or judicial oversight. Nor a lawyer who viewed conventions on prisoner treatment as out of date because of 9/11.
Such legal reasoning on detentions - rejected overwhelmingly in June by the nation's highest court - risks core American values. And there's precious little evidence that the tactics it spawned resulted in information that safeguarded the U.S. homeland more than other steps. They've been better at providing recruiting grist for Iraqi insurgents and Islamic terrorists.
It's no surprise that civil libertarians blast Gonzales-approved policies that, they contend, "paved the way for the horrific torture at Abu Ghraib."
But strong criticism of Gonzales has come from a less predictable source: longtime military lawyers who so objected to his office's legal views that they raised public alarms. As the Navy's former top lawyer said, "When we're captives, we sure don't want the Geneva Convention referred to as 'quaint' and 'obsolete.' "
The White House counsel maintains that neither he nor President Bush approved torture, nor advised military or spy-agency interrogators that they would be immunized against U.S. and international law on torture.
Senate scrutiny of many documents still kept from public view must test that claim. Senate Democrats will have to take the lead, this being no time to go along to get along.
Administration supporters cling to the fiction that the abuse centered on one cellblock at Abu Ghraib, the product of unpredictable individual lapses. This stance ignores the mounting evidence (some of it provided by official Pentagon investigations) that abuse bordering on torture was part of the interrogation routine at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other sites in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No one high in the military or civilian chain of command is being held criminally accountable. Army reservists face courts-martial, while policymaker Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld keeps his job and Gonzales gets this nomination.
What should citizens make of the Justice Department's revoking last week of the August 2002 Gonzales-approved torture memo? It repudiates the definition of torture only as physical pain "equivalent in intensity to... serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
This new policy raises an unavoidable issue: Shouldn't someone in power be held accountable for the no-holds-barred interrogations conducted over two years under the now-discredited police?
As attorney general, Gonzales would have to demonstrate an unquestioned respect for the rule of law. After his tenure as White House counsel, how can anyone have confidence in his ability to do that? |
