[Mb-civic] Is This the Best We Can Do?

[Michael Butler]

Also see below:    
Gonzales' Fingerprints All Over Un-American Behavior    €

  Go to Original

  Is This the Best We Can Do?
  By Marisa Arrona
  AlterNet

  Friday 04 February 2005

    Why Latinos - and all Americans - are not served well by the
confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General.

  Alberto Gonzales was confirmed Thursday by a 60-36 vote of the U.S. Senate
as the nation's first Latino Attorney General - 157 years and two days after
the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on
February 1, 1848. That treaty ended the Mexican-American War, which began,
ironically, as a dispute over Texas, where Gonzales was born and raised.
Gonzales, now the highest-ranking Latino in government, is practically the
poster child for Article IX of the treaty which conferred "the enjoyment of
all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles
of the Constitution" upon the new Mexican-Americans and their descendants.

  And now look how far we've come... or have we? Gonzales is touted as the
proverbial "bootstrap" success story - the second of eight children, whose
parents were children of Mexican immigrants, Gonzales was the only one in
his family to complete college. Many of us share Gonzales' story. Like
Gonzales, I was born and raised in Houston. My father, like Gonzales'
father, was a construction worker. In fact, like Gonzales, I attended
Douglas MacArthur High School. Gonzales and I have much in common actually -
similar family backgrounds and early education, both active in our
communities, an interest in political science (his undergraduate major) -
and we both ended up in law school.

  Then why, people ask me, don't I join in the "victory"? Why don't I join
the Latinos across the United States who hail Gonzales' appointment as a
sign of how far we have come, how we finally have a place at the table.
Because I refuse to overlook the glaring injustices in Gonzales' record
simply for the sake of putting a brown face in the White House. Because I
don't believe (as some groups have conceded) that Gonzales "is not nearly as
bad as we might have expected." Because I want to believe that just
policies, human rights, and due process are infinitely more important than
playing the race card. This myopic view - that a Latino, any damn Latino, in
the White House will trickle down to the rest of us - has allowed many to
turn a blind eye to Gonzales' track record on important legal issues. As a
Latina, I feel my duty to my community is to do my homework - to understand
just exactly what Alberto Gonzales will bring to the White House.

  There is more to Gonzales than the January 2002 memo he sent to President
Bush in which he wrote, "In my judgment, this new paradigm [of war] renders
obsolete [the Geneva Convention's] strict limitations on questioning of
enemy prisoners." In that memo, Gonzales acknowledges that this position
"would likely provoke widespread condemnation among our allies and in some
domestic quarters." Despite repeated requests to explain the memo in his
confirmation hearing, Gonzales failed to offer any legal reasoning for his
conclusions in the memo and opted instead to "promise" the Senate that, as
Attorney General, he will abide by treaties prohibiting the torture of
prisoners.

  In support of the Senate?s confirmation of Gonzales, Sen. Mitch McConnell
(R-Kentucky), said, "Judge Gonzales doesn't owe anybody an apology for his
record, but some owe him an apology for rimracking him with phony
allegations instead of honoring his willingness to serve his country." Sen.
McConnell is correct; Gonzales doesn't owe anyone an apology - he owes us an
explanation. As Attorney General, Gonzales essentially represents the
citizens of the United States. That includes me. I want Gonzales to explain
how the legal reasoning he used in the January 2002 memo will translate to
the policies he will set as our Attorney General.

  More than that, I want Gonzales to explain the legal reasoning he used in
his work before he was appointed White House Chief Counsel by George W.
Bush. For example, as chief legal counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas from
1995 to 1997, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of
each death penalty case - Bush decided whether a defendant should live or
die based on Gonzales' memos. During Gonzales' term, Texas executed more
prisoners than any other state. An examination in 2003 of the Gonzales
memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded: "Gonzales repeatedly failed to
apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective
counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of
innocence." His memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on
"only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than
informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The
memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush
from the earliest days of his administration - one in which he sought to
minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions."

  Then, as a Texas Supreme Court Justice, Gonzales accepted donations from
litigants. In the weeks between hearing oral arguments and making a decision
in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance, Justice Gonzales collected
a $2,000 contribution premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the
defendant insurance company in the case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed
a $2,500 contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance Company
just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance. In law
school, we learned to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Did Gonzales
miss that class?

  Gonzales was then Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court from 1998-2000.
During that time, Dick Cheney was head of Halliburton, which was the
second-largest corporate contributor to Texas Supreme Court races. Over a
period of seven years, five cases involving Halliburton came before the
court, and the court consistently ruled in favor of the corporation or let a
lower court decision favorable to Halliburton stand without re-hearing the
case. During this same period, Gonzales lawfully accepted $14,000 from
Enron, yet he subsequently did not recuse himself from the Administration?s
investigation of the Enron scandal when he was White House counsel.
[Progressive Newswire, 11/10/04.]

  Doesn't this "color" Gonzales' bootstrap success story? As the People for
the American Way points out, Gonzales' record reveals "a lawyer who too
often allows his legal judgment to be driven by his close relationship with
the President rather than adherence to the law or the Constitution. The risk
that such lack of independence poses for his ability as Attorney General to
be the lawyer for all of the people of this country is simply too great to
warrant his confirmation."

  I want Gonzales to live up to what former President Jimmy Carter said at
the 2004 Democratic Convention: "In repudiating extremism, we need to
recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend
partisan differences. First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place
in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human
rights in our daily lives and in global affairs. Second, we cannot maintain
our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic. Third,
we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that
polarizes and divides our country. Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if
we mistreat others. And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if
our leaders mislead."

  Gonzales does not come close to this "ideal." Latinos who blindly stand
behind Gonzales have lost sight of more than our future - they have
forgotten our past and our present. Believe me, I know plenty of brilliant,
talented, judicious Latinas/os, including some from high-ranking government
positions, and we could have done a lot better than Gonzales. Confirming his
nominationn, given his clear record of injustices, tells the world that not
only is he the best we think we can do, but that a record of supporting
torture and death doesn't bother us. As a Latina committed to social
justice, plenty of things the Bush administration has done have been "not in
my name," but this nomination and confirmation are one of the worst.

  Go to Original

  Gonzales' Fingerprints All Over Un-American Behavior
  By Joseph L. Galloway
  Knight Ridder Newspapers

  Thursday 03 February 2005

  WASHINGTON - President Bush this week gets the attorney general he wanted
for his Cabinet, Alberto Gonzales, a longtime Texas friend and his White
House counsel during his first term.

  Although a president is given wide latitude in choosing his own Cabinet no
matter which party controls the Senate, the time may come when the question
is asked: Did Republican senators do George Bush any favor when they voted
to confirm Gonzales as the nation's chief of law enforcement?

  We have not yet gotten to the bottom, or the top, of the prisoner abuse
scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or the extra-legal or illegal status
of the foreigners imprisoned without charges or legal protection at
America's own Devil's Island at Guantanamo, Cuba.

  Despite his faulty memory and his denials in testimony before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, Gonzales' fingerprints, and his legal advice, are all
over the administration's papers that sought to turn both the U.S.
Constitution and the Geneva Conventions on their heads.

  Opinions and advice flowed out of the White House to both the Justice
Department and the Defense Department beginning early in 2002 as to the lack
of prisoner-of-war status and legal protection for people taken prisoner by
American military forces, first in Afghanistan and then later in Iraq.

  At the Pentagon that advice was turned into guidance that flowed down from
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, and from Myers on down the chain of command.

  The message was fairly straightforward. The al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters
in Afghanistan were not to be accorded POW status under the Geneva
Conventions. They were not to be brought onto American soil, for fear they
might seek the legal protections accorded our own citizens. We would build a
concentration camp at the old American military base at Guantanamo. We would
create military tribunals to try those we had evidence against, while the
rest of them could rot in limbo forever.

  Powerful men debated over what amount of mistreatment or pressure might
constitute torture. Snarling dogs were OK. The water board that semi-drowns
a prisoner might be OK. Twenty hours of non-stop interrogation by yelling
and screaming guards was fine. Rumsfeld thought making a prisoner stand for
four hours straight wasn't nearly enough; how about 8 hours? he asked. Naked
prisoners locked for days in a very cold room? Not a problem. Some lawyer
even wrote that the infliction of severe pain wasn't really torture unless
it matched in intensity with organ failure or death.

  At the bottom end of the chain of command it was Army specialists and
sergeants, Reservists from the mountains of West Virginia and Pennsylvania,
who would decide that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were less than human and
subject to no rule of law or common decency.

  The powerful men who set all this in motion all rushed to denounce
criminal acts committed by a few, a very few, bad people in soldier
uniforms. Court-martial them and put them away and everything's just fine.
Actually it isn't fine and it won't be until our government backs away from
the abyss that lawless acts constitute.

  Gonzales is the first of his Hispanic heritage to serve as our country's
chief law enforcement officer. Normally that would be something for all of
us to be proud of, something that speaks loudly about who were are and what
we cherish.

  But these are hardly normal times. The president and his men, including
Gonzales, tell us that we are at war, the global war on terror. They have
decided that some of those we take prisoner are outside the protection of
law - either U.S. law or international law.

  No doubt some future Congress, 30 or 40 years from now, will pass a
resolution apologizing for this unseemly and undemocratic and un-American
behavior.

  -------

  Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder
Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once
... and Young."

 
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