The torturer general

[struggle4progress]

By Palm Beach Post Editorial
Thursday, January 06, 2005

The Justice Department has cracked down on charity fronts that launder contributions to terrorists in Iraq. Today, a man who gave terrorists one of their most important gifts appears before the Senate, seeking confirmation to run the Justice Department.

In 2002, Alberto Gonzales, working as a chief legal adviser to President Bush, wrote or approved memos falsely rationalizing that the president could ignore international agreements and U.S. statutes outlawing torture. The White House has refused to explain the role of Mr. Gonzales, who has tried to blur his responsibility for a notorious August 2002 torture memo. The New York Times reported Wednesday that "Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his."

Torture memos coupled with photographs of abused prisoners and reports of such acts as setting a detainee's hands on fire have knocked the United States off the moral high ground just as we were claiming to be the great liberators of Iraq. As a group of retired military officers, including former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili, wrote to senators this week, "These operations have fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence-gathering efforts and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world."

Two and a half years after the memo Mr. Gonzales requested claimed that treatment amounted to torture only if interrogators inflicted agony that was "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," the Justice Department last week posted a new policy affirming that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms." The real intention, it appears, is to make Judge Gonzales' hearings less painful for the Bush administration.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/01/06/a16a_gonzalesedit_0106.html

[BayouBengal07]

1. It makes me sick!

CBS news just had a story about Gonzalez's flaunting of the Geneva Convention, to which, CBS News reports, Republicans in his confirmation hearing argued "these are dangerous times" and that strong measures are necessary.

I'M SICK, TIRED, AND AFRAID OF THIS STRATEGY. EVERYTHING they say can be tied into how we're all about to die at the hands of a shadowy enemy, and we should bend to their demands. Like the Nazis, they can just claim "every time we waiver we expose ourselves to the threat".

It's very frightening, just how far they can go with it. It's a very powerful tool- the Germans friggin' invaded Poland claiming they were threatening the German border!