[Previous entry: "Assemblyman Condemns Palestinian Art Show"] [Next entry: "Letter from a Haitian Jail"]
11/12/2004:
"Meet Your New Attorney General...***Alberto Torquemada"
by Mike WhitneyThe Gonzales memos claimed that Bush had "the right to wave anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war."
Associated Press
Bush intends to put an advocate of torture at the head the Justice Dept. Is this how he rewards the "moral values" crowd who shoehorned him into the Oval Office?
Alberto Gonzales, name never should have been submitted as a candidate for Attorney General. His involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal is widely known and should have immediately disqualified him from consideration. The memos he produced that dismissed the Geneva Conventions as "obsolete" were critical in developing the rationale for using abusive techniques to extract information from prisoners. Once his role in facilitating the torture was exposed, he should have been swiftly disbarred and unceremoniously deposited in the White House dumpster.
That,s not how it works in the Bush Administration though, where the incidents of crime serve as Brownie-points for promotion. Instead, Gonzales will be trotted up to Capital Hill and get the requisite "nod" from the rubber stamp Congress so he can move into his new digs at the DOJ. Only the signage on the door of the Attorney General will change to accommodate the transition: "Alberto Torquemada; America,s Grand Inquisitor".
There,s no doubt about Gonzales complicity in the torture at Abu Ghraib. His controversial memos show that he was establishing the pretext for discarding Geneva as a "quaint" institution that obstructed the supreme powers of the presidency. His efforts were designed to deny prisoners of even the "minimal standards" of humane treatment and to legitimize the (well documented) brutality that followed. He is every bit as guilty of the unlawful abuse as if he had affixed the wires to the genitalia of detainees himself.
Full Article:counterpunch.org
