Friday, January 07, 2005
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/5175284.html
Last update: January 7, 2005 at 7:14 PM
Editorial: Gonzales/Democrats should reject him
January 8, 2005 ED0108A
Democrats in the U.S. Senate have many well-founded reasons to oppose with all their might President Bush's nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general. But one reason stands out above all others, and Democrats should pound it home: Gonzales believes the president of the United States has the power, as commander in chief, to permit the use of torture by American forces by immunizing from prosecution anyone who does it.
This reasoning was put forward in an August 2002 memo, called the Bybee memo, from the Department of Justice to the White House. Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that he, as the president's lawyer, simply passed the memo along. It wasn't his job, he said, to warn the president of the memo's implications or to disagree with it. Gonzales has a peculiar notion of his role as the president's attorney; others quite rightly characterize his behavior as a dereliction of duty. In fact, there's good reason to believe Gonzales was an active participant in the memo's construction.
But whatever his role, Gonzales clearly agreed with the memo, and does to this day.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking Democrat on the committee, tried every way he could to get Gonzales to answer "yes" or "no" to a simple question: "Now, as attorney general, would you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?" Gonzales tried all kinds of tacks to avoid answering: The question is hypothetical because Bush opposes the use of torture, etc. Leahy persisted, and finally Gonzales said, "Senator, I do believe there may come an occasion when the Congress might pass a statute that the president may view as unconstitutional," and therefore he can ignore it. The answer was disingenuous because the issue isn't laws Congress might pass, but established U.S. and international laws that prohibit the use of torture. Thus, the only reasonable way to interpret Gonzales' answer in the context it was asked is that, indeed, the president has the power to permit torture by immunizing those who do it.
The White House has done its darnedest to frustrate Judiciary Committee inquiries into Gonzales' role in the torture scandal. Leahy Thursday held aloft a hefty file of unanswered questions and letters he had sent to the White House seeking information on Gonzales' views about torture and his role in framing policies that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Despite that, Leahy and his colleagues got Gonzales on the record saying that he does believe the president has the power to override U.S. laws.
That's all the Democrats need to oppose Gonzales' confirmation en masse, and they should. Torture is always out of bounds, no matter the circumstance; it is immoral, ineffective and puts captured American forces at risk. Previous congresses and presidents have enacted laws and ratified international treaties to that effect.
The United States does not need an attorney general who believes that this president has the right to override those laws and treaties at his whim. Even if Gonzales is eventually confirmed, as it appears he will be, Senate Democrats must be on the record upholding the powerful principle that the United States unequivocally rejects torture.
End-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
