Gonzales in Iraq

The Attorney General for the United States was in Iraq over the weekend to help fashion a legal system for that war ravaged country...a bad omen if there ever was one. Gonzales is not one to advise anyone on the law, unless they are trying to break or circumvent it as he was the author of dubious memos that some feel permitted US servicemen/personnel in areas of conflict to torture detainees during interrogations or otherwise not feel obligated to follow the Geneva Conventions.

In a January 25, 2002, memo, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the President of "the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," a federal statute. He advised Bush to invent a legal technicality--declaring detainees in the "war on terror" to be outside the Geneva Conventions--which, he said, "substantially reduces" the chance of prosecution. Gonzales went further, telling the President that the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners"; he pooh-poohed concerns that abandoning the Geneva standards might endanger US troops.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040607/editors


Gonzales, a loyal member of the Bush cabinet also holds some troubling ideas about the role of the Executive branch of government, arguing the President has power as Commander-in-Chief to ignore laws passed by Congress, which some contend he has done throughout his presidency. The Attorney General also has some rather dicey ideas about internal surveillance of US citizens, contending the President has the authority to order domestic surveillance without
a court order.

Finally, the politicization of the Justice Department and the firing of federal attorneys general has further sullied the credibility of a mediocre jurist. Calls for his resignation, firing, impeachment, censure have gone unheeded by all to whom they are directed. Taking his dog and pony show to Iraq is sad to see. The US invaded that country because of its human rights abuses, and it appears we are leading the way in reinstating them, via a very corrupt U.S. Attorney General.