Approving Gonzales is Approving Torture

Also NY Time, today, Maureen Dowd

The Associated Press headline that came over the wire yesterday said it all:
"Gonzales Will Follow Non-Torture Policies."
You know how bad the situation is when the president's choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore.
Alberto Gonzales may have been willing to legally justify something that was abhorrent to everything America stands for, but it's all relative. Given that Mr. Gonzales is replacing the odious John Ashcroft, Democrats didn't seem inclined to try to derail the Hispanic nominee, even though his memo fostered the atmosphere that led to disgusting scandals in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
Just to get things started on the right foot, though, Mr. Gonzales planned to go the extra mile and offer the quaint, obsolete Senate Democrats a more nuanced explanation of why he called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete."
Before he helped President Bush circumvent the accords and reserve the right to do so "in this or future conflicts," you had to tune in to an old movie with Nazi generals or Vietcong guards if you wanted to see someone sneeringly shrug off the international treaty protecting prisoners from abuse. ("You worthless running dog Chuck Norris! What do we care about your silly Geneva Conventions?")
How are you to believe Mr. Gonzales when he says he's through with torture? His mission is clearly to do whatever he thinks Mr. Bush wants.
All gall is divided into parts, so what's next?"

Dowd is not the only one objecting
See www.truthout.org

and columns by Robert Sheer, LA Times
"Backing Gonzales Is Backing Torture"
That is the central question the Senate Judiciary Committee facesThursday as it begins hearings on the confirmation of White HouseCounsel Alberto Gonzales as the next attorney general of the UnitedStates. At stake is whether Congress wants to conveniently absolve Gonzales of his clear attempt to have the President subvert US law inorder to whitewash barbaric practices performed by US interrogators inthe name of national security.

Note: "Gonzales ignored the objections of State Department and militarylawyers to strongly endorse the determination of Justice Departmentlawyers that neither the Geneva Convention nor corresponding US laws onprisoner protections should be applied in the "war on terror."

____
Taking Liberties by DAVID COLE

Cabinet nominees are not known for going out on a limb. So when WhiteHouse counsel Alberto Gonzales intoned at the press conferenceannouncing his nomination to be Attorney General that "the Americanpeople expect and deserve a Department of Justice guided by the rule oflaw," observers could be forgiven for suppressing a yawn. Except that in this day and age, a Justice Department guided by the rule of law is a positively revolutionary concept.

Under the leadership of JohnAshcroft, the department has spent the past three years treating therule of law as at best an inconvenient obstacle, at worst a source ofnitpicking that "only aids terrorists."
. . .
Think about it:

Approving a man who used his White House position to bypass international treaties in approving torture, for the highest position of justice in this country, when we have such evidence of the resulting brutalization of prisoners, widely broadcast by every Muslim media, says what to the Muslim world?

Are we the bully we appear to be, or will we be governed by law and justice?

To sign a petition
Declaration Against Torture
Sign the petition to Gonzales and Congress at

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition.cfm?itemid=18313