The Snake Slithers Past The Senate As It Hisses Its Approval

We have a president and cabinet that lies then attacks those that point it out. They lied to invade a country on false charges and murdered thousands in the process while getting over 1300 of our people killed and maiming thousands. What's more the country did NOT attack us, we attacked them using the entire U.S. military like hired thugs. It was a power grab (as outlined by Dick Cheney and other neocons in a paper written ten years before). This administration advocated changing the rules so they could torture people. This doesn't make America safer it creates the terrorists of tomorrow. It was only 19 people that highjacked planes on 9/11 and Bin Laden says his aim is to bankrupt America. Well, we're not only going deeper in debt every second to foreign banks but our sense of decency is being twisted into an ugly wound that festers instead of healing. With the Senate approval of Gonzales as attorney general we are putting the worst possible candidate into the office at the greatest time of danger to our liberties and sense of being for the nation. The only reason for it is that Bush plans even more hideous transgressions against our Constitution and our American values.


February 4, 2005
NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The Senate and Mr. Gonzales

The confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general yesterday was depressing. The president deserves a great deal of leeway in choosing his own cabinet. But beyond his other failings, Mr. Gonzales has come to represent the administration's role in paving the way for the abuse and torture of prisoners by American soldiers and intelligence agents. Giving him the nation's top legal post is a terrible signal to send the rest of the world, and to American citizens concerned with human rights.

The 60-to-36 vote for confirmation was also preceded by a depressing debate. There was the usual comic opera of these Senate votes, with the president's party piously denouncing all opposition as outrageous politicking and the opposition piously denying it. But this debate had a sinister overtone as well: in a ham-handed way, the Republicans tried to portray a vote against Mr. Gonzales as an act of bigotry.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, declaring that "I love the Hispanic people," warned that Hispanic Americans were "sensing there's something unfair going on." Using that "more in sorrow than in anger" tone that senators reserve for their most blatantly political comments, he added, "I suspect there's more than politics being played here."

Mr. Gonzales has the kind of life story that all Americans should admire, and that many can find in their families. The value of diversity in the cabinet is indisputable. But it is also irrelevant here. Mr. Gonzales was a bad choice for attorney general because of his record, not his ethnic background.

It was Mr. Gonzales who asked for the original legal advice from the Justice Department on the treatment of prisoners in the "war on terror." There was no need to go through that exercise; the rules were clear. But Mr. Gonzales gave the president the flexibility he wanted, first in the Justice Department memo outlining ways to make torture seem legal, and then by offering the Orwellian argument that the president can declare himself above the law and can order illegal actions like detaining prisoners without a hearing and authorizing torture.

Republican senators made much of the fact that the White House repudiated the original memo on torture - after it became public. But this is not just a matter of historical interest. Mr. Gonzales testified that he agreed with the substance of the original torture memo, and he still takes the view that the president can declare himself to be above the law. In written responses to senators' questions, Mr. Gonzales argued that intelligence agents could "abuse" prisoners as long as they did it to foreigners outside the United States.

Republican senators argued that it was unfair to say Mr. Gonzales was personally responsible for the specific acts of torture and degradation at Abu Ghraib. That would be a fair defense if anyone were doing that. The Democrats simply said, rightly, that Mr. Gonzales was one of the central architects of the administration's policy of evading legal restrictions on the treatment of prisoners. He should not have been rewarded with one of the most important jobs in the cabinet.