Gonzales: Baffled and Bewildered

Gonzales seemed a little bewildered yesterday, I think he is still truly baffled why everyone is making such a big deal about the fired U.S. Attorneys. In his 03/07/2007 editorial that appeared in USA Today he wrote that he hoped the "episode ultimately will be recognized for what it is: an overblown personnel matter." He doesn't seem to get that the Democrats are grasping at this wispy straw of an offense and using it as an excuse to get him before the Senate and do their best to get him fired.

Gonzales has done a number of ethically questionable things in his service to the Bush Administration but I believe what is really behind Attorneygate is Gonzales role in condoning torture and mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (Amy Goodman has similar opinion ).

While I really don't think Gonzales is stupid or incompetent, I can't fathom how anyone cannot understand the repercussions of condoning torture at any time but especially while we are involved in a war. Gonzales, when he was White House counsel, went along with the legal opinion written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in the "War on Terror". This opinion opened the door for the use of torture and other inhumane treatment to prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. And while I suppose someone (not me) could make the argument that these people are terrorists and they don't deserve humane treatment, etc., the problem is that the U.S. military has tended to cast a very wide net when rounding up suspected terrorists and as a result many, many people who are not terrorists and have broken no laws were put into prison. Since the U.S. took it over, Abu Ghraib in particular has held hundreds and probably thousands of prisoners who had done nothing wrong except be Iraqi. While I do not think that every prisoner at Abu Ghraib was badly mistreated (or at least I hope not) I'm sure that many innocent people were. And I'm sure that everyone in Baghdad now probably knows someone or knows someone who had a family member, friend or acquaintance who was in Abu Ghraib and has heard stories of how bad it was. Not a great way to win the hearts and minds of the people whose country you are occupying.

Though, I believe that it is important that the judiciary be relatively nonpartisan, let's get real. It has become customary for incoming presidents to replace all or the vast majority of the U.S. Attorneys left over from the previous administration with their own appointees (LA Times, 03/23/07). And while the President does take recommendations from Senators and others, it is ultimately his decision who he decides to appoint. While firing U.S. Attorneys when they are in the process of investigating someone in your party seems a bit ethically questionable there isn't any law against it. And though more or less secretly changing the statute that covers how attorneys are appointed (as Gonzales admitted to doing in his Senate testimony) seems ethically questionable there isn't a law against it. And saying that the firings were in no way politically motivated but were for "performance-related" reasons despite emails which indicate otherwise isn't necessarily a lie but it makes the Justice Department seem at best disorganized and at worst... well, what's one more lie? And again, there is no law against it unless you count perjury, but they managed to throw Libby under the bus without involving Bush or Cheney and there does seem to be a limitless supply of loyal underling "Bushies" willing to take a fall for their guy or his cronies.

Personally I believe Gonzales when he says he delegated to others the duty of compiling a list of which U.S. Attorneys were going to be fired: 1) because it was ultimately up to the President who was fired and who wasn't; 2) he does have a lot to do as head of the Justice Department and could have been as he claimed in his Senate testimony too busy to get involved (DOJ organizational chart); and 3) if he was lying I think he would have done a better job of coming up with more believable story about his involvement.

And why should he have have a hand in it? As he has said over and over again the U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling at the Justice Department were communicating with Harriet Miers and others at the White House to compile a list of which U.S. Attorneys were to be fired. Gonzales really didn't need to be involved if the White House was ultimately making the decision. For some reason I don't think Gonzales ever said this very clearly or maybe it was an answer he didn't want to give. He is in sort of Catch-22 position: if he admits that the decision was made in the White House then the firings are going to be criticized for being political in nature, but when he claims, as he did in his USA Today editorial, the firings were done for "personnel" reasons, it indicates that the decision was not so much political but relied heavily on input from the Dept. of Justice and he runs the risk of being held solely responsible for mishandling the situation. Gonzales looks especially incompetent because he admitted yesterday that he OK'd the firing of the U.S. Attorneys without even reviewing their personnel records, which indicates that either the White House made the decision so it didn't matter what he did or didn't know about it; or that he was very negligent: he may have been busy but he could have spent an hour looking over the reasons why he was about to fire eight high-profile employees.

Maybe at this point he thinks that if he just pretends he didn't know anything about any of it, it will all go away like a bad dream.


More links:

Attorneygate Timeline
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/usa-timeline.php

The Roots of Torture
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/

Article regarding White House Torture Memo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26401-2004Jun8.html

Editorial on Gonzales' history regarding human rights
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14035/