Mr. Gonzales's Record (washingtonpost.com): "Mr. Gonzales has never accepted responsibility, or been held accountable, for his role in setting administration policies that led to extensive violations of international law -- and U.S. standards of justice -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay and in other still-secret detention facilities. Mr. Gonzales should not become attorney general without being asked by the Senate to answer for that record.
The starting point was Mr. Gonzales's recommendation to Mr. Bush that he declare the Geneva Conventions -- whose rules on the questioning of prisoners he derided as "obsolete" -- inapplicable to detainees from Afghanistan. That decision caused enormous damage to U.S. standing even with close allies, yet from a practical point of view was entirely unnecessary. Mr. Gonzales ignored the advice of the administration's most seasoned national security officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told him it was possible to indefinitely detain and vigorously interrogate al Qaeda members without violating Geneva, and that he risked undermining a U.S. military culture of treating prisoners humanely. That prophecy came true when Gen. Sanchez used Mr. Gonzales's logic to authorize the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The position Mr. Gonzales endorsed, that the president could declare that all those captured in Afghanistan were not entitled to Geneva protections, has since been ruled illegal by one federal judge and has led to numerous other judicial complications."
- posted by geoff @ #