Promoting Torture's Promoter

[Be Brave]

By BOB HERBERT

Published: January 7, 2005

If the United States were to look into a mirror right now, it wouldn't recognize itself.

The administration that thumbed its nose at the Geneva Conventions seems equally dismissive of such grand American values as honor, justice, integrity, due process and the truth. So there was Alberto Gonzales, counselor to the president and enabler in chief of the pro-torture lobby, interviewing on Capitol Hill yesterday for the post of attorney general, which just happens to be the highest law enforcement office in the land.

Mr. Gonzales shouldn't be allowed anywhere near that office. His judgments regarding the detention and treatment of prisoners rounded up in Iraq and the so-called war on terror have been both unsound and shameful. Some of the practices that evolved from his judgments were appalling, gruesome, medieval.

But this is the Bush administration, where incompetence and outright failure are rewarded with the nation's highest honors. (Remember the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded last month to George Tenet et al.?) So not only is Mr. Gonzales's name being stenciled onto the attorney general's door, but a plush judicial seat is being readied for his anticipated elevation to the Supreme Court.

It's a measure of the irrelevance of the Democratic Party that a man who played such a significant role in the policies that led to the still-unfolding prisoner abuse and torture scandals is expected to win easy Senate confirmation and become attorney general. The Democrats have become the 98-pound weaklings of the 21st century.

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/07/opinion/07herbert.html

[Kurt Remarque]

1. i agree. we have become a warped version of our former selves

[punpirate]

2. In a different time...

... the mere nomination of Gonzales to such a post, knowing what we know of his background and his attitudes, would have provoked outrage, and then derision, from both sides of the aisle. Now, we can't find a single Democrat to call this for what it is--cronyism. This man has lied about his role in officially-sanctioned torture, and deserves to be booted out of government and all official life forever.

In 1949, had he been on the wrong side, he would have been sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials--by American judges. Now our putative government intends to place him in the country's top law enforcement position?

The Geneva Conventions (the supreme law of the land according to Article 6 of our own Constitution) are "quaint?"

This man is vile, and despicable.

[realFedUp]

3. It's his judgement stupid

As Mr. Herbert makes clear, from almost every
public decision we've seen Mr. Gonzalez make,
his judgement is questionable at best, lax
at worst and perhaps intentionally ignoring
the law overall.

(also, to the original poster...it's helpful
to post the author's name in the subject line
to find these more easily in the forum)

[struggle4progress]

4. kick