That’s fine if you don’t buy the Nuremburg defense. But it still doesn’t make what he did/said the same as personally strapping someone’s scrotum to a car battery. Not even close. To suggest otherwise does nothing but hurt your case.
Now that’s interesting. I’m not sure if it’s relevant, but it’s interesting.
No, he did not. A memo justifying the use of torture was written by Jay Bybee out of Ashcroft’s Justice Department and sent to Gonzales.
He was a transactional lawyer. Transactional attorneys do not try cases. Trying cases is also pretty well irrelevant to being the head of the Justice Department. What, you think the guy’s going down to court every day to argue motions and pick juries? Get real.
From a summary of an Atlantic Monthly article (subscription only):
Liberals have plenty of under-desk space; we’re used to shocked reactions from Republicans. We also wear tight hats so our double-takes don’t knock them off our heads.
Dunno. Is writing a law to do something equal to actually doing it?
In that case, they’d better let that (warning: hyperbole coming up) Saddam guy go. He wrote for a lot of people to get killed and tortured, but I don’t think it was him who set up the gas mortars.
(Warning: More hyperbole coming up) So was (gasp) Goebbels. They probably took the same pleasure in their work, too.
The thing about Gonzalez’s floaters is that they haven’t just been maniacal or evil, they’ve been blatantly incompetent. The guy thought it would be legal to snatch Americans on American soil without warrant and hold them forever. He thought following orders was an actual defense to war crimes accusations. A child would know the laws better than this putz, and we’re going to make him AG for the country?
Bush nominated him. I don’t know who has or what oversight there is for approving this nomination, but I hope they have brains. Or at least hearts.
I strongly strongly disagree with Gonzales’s apparent position and/or argument regarding torture. But I did find this quote from him that gives me a little hope (regarding his vote on the Texas Supreme Court that some teenagers should be allowed abortion without parental consent):
Dunno. Is writing a law to do something equal to actually doing it?
In that case, they’d better let that (warning: hyperbole coming up) Saddam guy go. He wrote for a lot of people to get killed and tortured, but I don’t think it was him who set up the gas mortars.
(Warning: More hyperbole coming up) So was (gasp) Goebbels. They probably took the same pleasure in their work, too.
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Well done, Zagadka! Couldn’t have said it better. Don’t know why it’s such a stretch to understand that creating a premise to enable the use of torture is equivalent to doing the actual torture. We don’t hesitate to say Hitler killed 6,000,000 Jews, even though he personally didn’t turn on the gas jets.
Are people misunderstanding the news stories?
Minty: I’d be interested in hearing your opinion on this guy. I suspect that almost all of us in this thread (including myself) don’t really have a clue what we’re talking about on this issue. Is the guy competant? Does he have a history of accomplishment one way or the other?
Sam: I’ll have to refer you to my limited comments (starting on page 2) of this thread.
John Mace: Yes, people are misunderstanding the news stories. There are basically three memos at issue here.
The first is a January 2002 memo drafted under Gonzales’ name (but allegedly written in substantial part by some guy out of Cheney’s office whose name escapes me at the moment), which argued that the Geneva Convention does not apply to members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. For reasons that I have expressed in numerous threads and do not want to repeat here, I believe that conclusion is legally correct. But the important point is that the January '02 memo says nothing whatsoever about torture, extreme interrogation techniques, etc. It undoubtedly served as cover for sending the prisoners to Guantanamo, but does not condone or justify any mistreatment of those prisoners.
The second memo is an August 2002 Justice Department memo, signed by Jay Bybee (now a member of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals), and sent to Gonzales. That memo concludes that the infliction of pain during interrogation has to be “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” to constitute torture. Thus, the memo implicitly endorsed anything short of breaking bones and cattle prods to the groin. We do not know how Gonzales reacted to this memo, or whether he even read the especially nasty bits.
The third memo is a March 2003 memo from the Defense Department’s lawyers, which outlined specific interrogation techniques that were to be permitted at Guantanamo Bay. It also argues that the president, as commander in chief, has the authority to approve any kind of interrogation he wants, including torture, and that those persons who used such techniques under authorization of the president could not be charged conducting an otherwise criminal act. Gonzales had no part in the writing of this memo, although one of the luminaries who did help write it has since been nominated to the 4th Circuit.
Obviously, this is some messed up shit, and Gonzales should be questioned sharply about it during his Senate confirmation hearings. But let’s at least get the facts straight about what he did and what he did not do or say on these issues.
Forgot to point out that the third memo was not even directed to Gonzales. It appears to have been purely internal to DoD.
Wasn’t Gonzales also chief counsel for Enron? Approved all the ethically suspect practices they used, then was picked up by our corrupt and insane executive branch to sign off on torture and other ethical niceties.
Way to respond to the peoples concerns about morals, shrub.
The opinions in Supreme Court state that detainment in Guatanamo is legal because the people held there are prisoners of war. Sending prisoners of war to Guatanamo is legal. The only reason not to classify them as POWs is so that they don’t have the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The treatment of detainees was one of the thorniest legal issues facing the Bush administration. If their chief lawyer skipped over the memo condoning their torture, then he’s either lying or incompetent. That said, your right, he might have decried the memo to high heaven and we just didn’t hear about it, so I guess we’ll have to reserve judgement until he speaks publically about his response. That said, if he says he never saw the memo, or skipped over the bad bits, I’m going to cry B.S.
In Government there is a tendency for in-house counsel to run into people who are use to having their ever wish anticipated and executed. They expect it, too. I have experience it and I imagine that other posters here who have been government lawyers or even house counsel for big businesses have too. The watch word for these people is “Don’t tell me what I can’t do; tell me how to do what I want to do.” That attitude is wide spread and may have something to do with Sam’s comment about the function of the President’s Counsel:
The attitude while wide spread is simply the big-shot’s temper tantrum at not having his way. More than one big shot has just changed lawyers until he finds one that will find some theory, no matter how weak, no matter how disingenuous, no matter how factious, that allows the big shot to semi-plausibly that his project as been vetted by the lawyers and found proper - what we use to call “LS-MFT”, legally sufficient, mighty fine trial.
In Mr. (Late Justice) Gonzales Mr. Bush seems to have found a guy who will vouchsafe, approve and stamp as LS-MFT, just about anything the President, or his principle henchmen might want to do. I’m not at all sure that is a good trait for the AGUS.
Another thing that bothers me about Mr. Gonzales is that a fair portion of the very people who are qualified to talk about the issues surrounding and included in the three memos and are in a position to talk in public, the retired Judge Advocate General of the Navy and a retired uniformed judge from the Army Court of Appeals, say that the uniformed lawyers were completely cut out of the process and were deliberately excluded when they tried to butt in claiming an expertise in a matter that directly effected them and their duty. It is a little like going to the hospital administrator for a diagnoses when you think that the doctors are going to tell you something you don’t want to hear.
It seems to me that the President already has enough people telling him what he wants to hear. It would be sort of nice if we could get some one to give an objective analysis. It is pretty clear that Mr. Gonzales hasn’t done that in the past and is not about to start now.
I have every regard for our friend Minty, his professional competence and personal judgement, not the least because we received out professional education at the same institution and he was one of the first posters on this board to suggest that Senator Kerry would be a viable candidate for President. I suspect that he puts more faith in Mr. Gonzales that is justified. Maybe it’s a Texas thing.
I should have prefaced my comments with “withing the law”. It’s also the Council’s job to tell the president what he CAN’T do. But we never hear about those. I’m sure there have been plenty of things floated by Gonzalez that has caused him to say, “I’m sorry Mr. President, but that won’t fly. And here’s why.”
Well, when Bush goes on one of his “why can’t I just declare myself Emperor” kicks, somebody has got to talk him down. 
Well, yea, but that’s only because Bush is f*ing nuts.
One of those “I’m sorry Mr. President, but that won’t fly” probably involved a rodeo, Osama bin Laden, and Bush riding a bull with a lasso.
Whatever. Every council to a president is presented with these issues, and it’s job to advise the president on the legality of them. There’s nothing new here.
But by all means, if you see an opportunity to throw out another Bush bash, you should take it. You won’t feel complete otherwise.