Against The Confirmation Of Alberto Gonzales

A group of bloggers, many of them past and present contributors to Daily Kos, have drafted a petition for bloggers opposed to the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. It's quite good, and I am signing on (on behalf of myself, obviously, not ObWi as a whole.) Some quotes:

Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint." (...)

Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: "After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should 'judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.'" We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales's nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, "[t]he world is indeed watching." Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

While none of the President's recent cabinet nominations would have been my choice, in every case but this I am not opposing their confirmation. But Gonzales is different. Both in memos he wrote and in memos he approved, his legal advice gave legal cover to torture. Moreover, he argued in support of the view that the President has the right to set aside laws and treaties in time of war. This claim strikes at the heart of our system of government, which is based on the rule of law. To have an Attorney General who accepts it is, in my view, unacceptable.

There are plenty of exceptional lawyers in this country. Many of them are quite conservative. No one forced President Bush to choose, out of all the competent candidates whose views are compatible with his own, a person who argued against the rule of law. That's why I'm signing on to this petition. I would urge other bloggers, especially conservatives, to consider doing so as well. There is nothing conservative about the idea that the President should not be bound by the law. Conservatism, I always thought, involved the idea that government should be restrained by the law, and that loosing those restraints is profoundly dangerous to individual freedom. This administration has argued, among other things, that it has the power to detain citizens indefinitely, without charges or access to counsel, on the President's say-so. (The Padilla and Hamdi cases.) While this particular argument has been shot down by the Supreme Court, the administration has not renounced the view that the President is not bound by law in wartime. We need an Attorney General who will oppose such arguments in future, not one who will abet them.

Comments

[votermom]

There's no way to sign that petition anymore, is there?

Btw, I called Specter's office yesterday, got a busy signal, sent him an email, called again, and got a staffer who said Specter will "probably vote to confirm." No surprise. I told the staffer I'm from PA and will be very disappointed if he votes yes.

[hilzoy]

Yes, but I think you have to have a blog. Follow the link in the post to see how.

[votermom]

The committee has voted, 10-8, along party lines. I guess it goes to the full Senate vote next?
Is there any hope for any Republican senators voting against?

[blogbudsman]

hilzoy, I can certainly understand why you would not support Mr. Gonzales, or George Bush for that matter. But I can't, for the life of me imagine you signing on to a petition so wrought with misinformation and misrepresentation. From the first sentence to the last it is over the top emotional nonsense. At least Gonzales' legal opinions were accurate.

[votermom]

Oh, pooh. People opposed to Gonzales as AG should stand together. How constructive would it be to nitpick a petition, exactly? Specially when time is of the essence.

At least Gonzales' legal opinions were accurate.

Really? I'm not a lawyer, but can something be accurate when it is incomplete? Like Gonzales death penalty memo that fails to mention that the condemned is retarded? Or his failing to point out in that "torture memo" that the Geneva Conventions state that they are binding even on countries that do not sign them? Sorry I don't have the cites at hand, but I could look them up. They've all been presented here before.

[Mo MacArbie]

While I support the aims of the petition, I have to admit that the idea of pseudonymous "signatures" makes me chuckle. Not all of them are, to be sure. And I suppose that the Blog handles have more power than the real names of the undersigned in many cases. Still, I can't help but picture John Hancock writing "Bird Dog"...

[Jesurgislac]

Blogs: At least Gonzales' legal opinions were accurate.

They accurately resembled the legal opinions that Bush & Co wanted him to have, yes.

They contradicted much US and international law.

[Jesurgislac]

Interesting: not one mention of torture in the whole article.

You'd never think Gonzales was trying to legalize this.

[Armando]

Thank you for joining us Hilzoy. It is greatly appreciated.

As for the claims of inaccuracies in our post, we believe the record is clear. In particualr we find it hard to believe that anyone seriously questions the view that Gonzales believes it is legal for the CIA to violate the standards established by federal law and the UN Convention on Torture with regard to non-U.S. citizens held overseas. Those are Gonzales' words.

These are hard truths for Republicans. I understand that. But shutting your eyes does not make it untrue.

[Timmy the Wonder Dog]

Eyes wide open Armando, how about yours?

[Anarch]

Jeanne D'Arc has a great post on this subject over at Body and Soul.

[Jesurgislac]

Timmy: Eyes wide open Armando, how about yours?

So, you've looked at the pictures of torture, understood that Gonzales wants to legalize those actions, and decided this is a good thing?

[blogbudsman]

Jes retorts "So, you've looked at the pictures of torture, understood that Gonzales wants to legalize those actions, and decided this is a good thing?"

I've looked at the pictures, and although they don't represent what I've always considered classic torture, you know, bamboo strips in the fingernails, the real painful stuff, it was reprehensible on the part of the perpetrators. These goulish Americans have been punished and our whole country has suffered from thier actions. Gonzales' accurate legal brief, honorbly requested and dutifully provided, had nothing remotely to due with the pictures taken that night. Eyes wide open? I'm sure yours are.

[CaseyL]

Jes - the answer to your question is 'yes.'

The pro-torture posters' offer many rationales for their lack of discomfort. The 'best' one by far was this bit of priceless reasoning:

"Since torture is illegal, whatever the Bush Administation is doing is not torture."

[Thorley Winston]

Blogbudsman wrote:

Gonzales' accurate legal brief, honorbly requested and dutifully provided, had nothing remotely to due with the pictures taken that night.

Quite correct but let’s be honest about something, this has been pretty much the MO of those who have been crying and lying that “the Bush administration is legalizing torture” for the last several months. Any incident of abuse even though prosecuted and having nothing to do with anything Gonzales actually wrote or approved is conflated in order to mislead people into thinking that this is somehow policy. Let’s be honest, if they had to argue against actual policies* rather than “defend this incident of abuse as your policy” strawman arguments, they’d lose.

* G-d help them if they actually had to come up with constructive alternatives.

[hilzoy]

Just to be clear:

(a) I have spoken to a lot of lawyers about Gonzales' memos. Some of them are normally Democrats and some are normally Republicans. None of them think that Gonzales' memo is at all accurate. It might be acceptable as an attempt to plead one particular side as effectively as possible (as a lawyer does in a court case), although even there most people I've spoken to say it's really stretching it. But what Gonzales' memo was supposed to be was not an attempt to argue the law, but a statement of what the law is. And I haven't met anyone who thinks that considered as a statement of what the law if, it passes the laugh test.

(b) I agree with the view of the torture memos generally that's expressed here. I also regard the idea that Gonzales is responsible for the memo he wrote, and not for memos he requested and forwarded, when he could have sent them back to their authors and asked for revisions, as disingenuous. For this reason I do not in the least have a problem with referring to Gonzales as a person who gave legal cover to torture. Torture here does not necessarily mean Abu Ghraib. It includes extraordinary rendition, the abuse of prisoners by the CIA and military intelligence, etc. Talking about the few people who have thus far been tried, and omitting the large number of incidents for which no one is now being held responsible, not to mention the question why so many similar incidents happened in so many different places if they were perpetrated only be "a few bad apples" who didn't know each other, is a red herring, as far as I am concerned.

(c) Suppose you reject (b) above. In my original post I provided an additional reason to reject Gonzales' appointment, namely that he has argued for the claim that the President has the right to set aside laws and treaties in wartime, at his discretion. Even if there had been no problem with torture under this administration, and no torture memos, and so forth, making this argument would disqualify him for me. I believe, deeply, that we are and should remain a government of laws, not of men. This is not a peripheral matter (like disagreeing with Gonzales on some technical point of tort law); it's central to our system of government, and is one of the main things that makes us not a tyranny. I would oppose any nominee who took this position, torture or no torture.

[votermom]

I wonder, at people who support Gonzales because he is Bush's pick -- do you not in any way resent having to support him? Would you not have preferred Bush to pick a republican lawyer with an impeccable ethical record?

[Anarch]

I wonder, at people who support Gonzales because he is Bush's pick -- do you not in any way resent having to support him? Would you not have preferred Bush to pick a republican lawyer with an impeccable ethical record?

At the risk of earning a Karnak, I'll wager they believe he does have an impeccable ethical record.

[Edward]

G-d help them if they actually had to come up with constructive alternatives.

I can use the help, so here's a few:

1. Increase the prisoner to guard ratio in places like Abu Ghraib.
2. Pinpoint who, in each instance where abuse took place, was ultimately in charge. Who was right above the person commiting the abuse. Make them stand trial as well. This will serve to put other supervisors on notice that they must ensure those under their command obey the rules. If the supervisors are proven not guilty, they'll be cleared, but the message will be sent loud and clear that each supervisor is responsible for ensuring no torture takes place. (lawyers...is that possible?)
3. Have Gonzales come clean. Currently he's doing little more than dance around the issue. Specifically, it's not enough, in the revised memo, to say the section discussing Presidential amnesty is not being repeated because it was never relevant. Explain, fully, why it made it into the first memo in the first place.
4. Have a very public ceremony recommitting the United States to the principles of the Geneva Convention guidelines.

Or did you mean alternatives on how to extract information from reluctant prisoners? In that case, I'll point, once again, to what a professional interrogator says

[votermom]

I totally agree with #2
and also have congress appoint a special prosecutor to investigate (what, they can appoint one to investigate a bl*w job but not systematic torture?)

[Jesurgislac]

Blogbuds: These goulish Americans have been punished and our whole country has suffered from thier actions.

But the people who gave the orders for these actions have not been punished. Doesn't that bother you?

[Katherine]

hilzoy--this story was all over the Australian press:

Habib 'tortured with prostitute'. AUSTRALIAN Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib was tied to the ground while a prostitute menstruated on him after he failed to co-operate with interrogators, his lawyer said yesterday.

(The story continues). It just sounded outlandish to me. And I knew that Habib had some mental health problems before his arrest, and being apparently tortured in Egypt for months and then being held in poor conditions in Guantanamo could not have helped any. I filed it under: "could be true, but probably isn't", and it made me wonder about some of Habib's other allegations as well--though some of those had been corroborated by others.

So I begin my research today, and what do I find, but this?

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon (news - web sites) review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the author, former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar, 29, told AP.

Saar didn't provide the manuscript or approach AP, but confirmed the authenticity of nine draft pages AP obtained. He requested his hometown remain private so he wouldn't be harassed.

Saar, who is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent, worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. camp in eastern Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003. At the time, it was under the command of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had a mandate to get better intelligence from prisoners, including alleged al-Qaida members caught in Afghanistan (news - web sites).

Saar said he witnessed about 20 interrogations and about three months after his arrival at the remote U.S. base he started noticing "disturbing" practices.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.

Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door" of one interrogation team's office, he writes. "Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors ... on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk."

Some Guantanamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by "prostitutes."

In another case, Saar describes a female military interrogator questioning an uncooperative 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour received pilot instruction for three months in 1996 and in December 1997 at a flight school in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"His female interrogator decided that she needed to turn up the heat," Saar writes, saying she repeatedly asked the detainee who had sent him to Arizona, telling him he could "cooperate" or "have no hope whatsoever of ever leaving this place or talking to a lawyer.'"

The man closed his eyes and began to pray, Saar writes....

The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft, stamped "Secret."

The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.

"She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee," he says. "As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.

"She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" — so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

Events Saar describes resemble two previous reports of abusive female interrogation tactics, although it wasn't possible to independently verify his account....

In another incident, the military reported that in early 2003 a different female interrogator "wiped dye from red magic marker on detainees' shirt after detainee spit (cq) on her," telling the detainee it was blood. She was verbally reprimanded, the military said.

[Katherine]

whoops. the first paragraph somehow got deleted. I was going to say: hilzoy--Kos has set up a site where bloggers opposing the Gonzales nomination can link to their posts.

[hilzoy]

Katherine,

So far beyond awful.

[Katherine]

the other part of the first paragraph that I somehow managed to delete was: I hate how I keep lowering my expectations, and then finding that I haven't lowered them far enough yet.

[Katherine]

And on the "non-reassuring non-answers from our President" front--this is from the press conference yesterday:

Q: Mr. President, I'd like to ask you about the Gonzales nomination, and specifically, about an issue that came up during it, your views on torture. You've said repeatedly that you do not sanction it, you would never approve it. But there are some written responses that Judge Gonzales gave to his Senate testimony that have troubled some people, and specifically, his allusion to the fact that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of some prisoners is not specifically forbidden so long as it's conducted by the CIA and conducted overseas. Is that a loophole that you approve?

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, Al Gonzales reflects our policy, and that is we don't sanction torture. He will be a great Attorney General, and I call upon the Senate to confirm him.

O-kay then.