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Gunning for Gonzales
NRO ^ | January 04, 2005 | Lee A. Casey & David B. Rivkin Jr.

Posted on 01/04/2005 4:23:44 PM PST by swilhelm73

President Bush's nomination of Judge Alberto Gonzales to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general will soon come before the Senate for its advice and consent, and there is going to be a battle royal. The Left is marshaling its forces to bloody Gonzales, and clearly hopes to deny him confirmation. The pretext for opposing this superbly qualified appointee will be his role, as White House counsel, in developing the administration's legal position on the classification and treatment of individuals captured in the War on Terror. The stakes in this battle are high: At issue may be nothing less than the future of American sovereignty.

Ever since the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse photographs surfaced nearly a year ago, opponents of the Bush administration's policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have used those images in their ongoing effort to discredit the American legal position on "detainees." That position — which correctly denies captured al-Qaeda and Taliban members the rights and privileges granted to honorable prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions — was outlined by Gonzales, based on legal advice received from the Departments of Justice and State, in a memorandum to the president dated January 25, 2002. Gonzales explained in that memo that the United States is engaged in "a new kind of war" that is "not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop" for the Geneva Conventions. This "new paradigm," he concluded, "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, script (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments."

The "quaint" reference will undoubtedly be brought up over and over again during the judge's Senate hearings. In truth, Gonzales was being charitable. He could have used far harsher language to describe provisions that, were they applicable to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, would require the United States to provide detainees with amenities such as dormitories, kitchenettes, sports equipment, canteens, and a monthly pay allowance in Swiss francs — all while captured (or kidnapped) Americans are routinely butchered. It is hardly surprising that, while the administration preserved the core requirement of humane treatment for detainees captured in the War on Terror, it rejected calls to grant them POW status.

The Geneva POW Convention was one of four treaties negotiated after World War II, with the circumstances of that conflict in mind. It assumed that captured combatants would by and large be young men conscripted into mid-20th-century-type mass armies controlled by nation-states, which themselves were ready and able to comply with the basic rules of war. Neither the treaty's drafters, nor its terms, nor the governments that agreed to it contemplated the development of transnational terror organizations beyond the control of any state, motivated by religious zealotry and capable of delivering massive attacks on the civilian population.

Even so, the Geneva Conventions do not extend POW protections to captured enemy combatants who do not qualify as "lawful" or "privileged belligerents." At a minimum, this status requires a proper command structure, uniforms, carrying arms openly, and otherwise operating in accordance with the laws of war. Those laws forbid the purposeful targeting of civilians — the preferred tactic of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Iraqi "insurgents."

Although the administration's opponents have variously claimed that the Geneva Conventions do apply to such irregular "unlawful combatants" — either because such individuals are the "armed forces" of Afghanistan or because they are "civilians" — this was not the story 25 years ago. At that time, precisely because the law denies POW status to unlawful combatants, the Left made extraordinary efforts to legitimize the guerrilla tactics favored by "national liberation movements." The result was the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions, a treaty President Reagan rejected and which, as a result, does not bind the United States.

Undeterred by such legal niceties, the administration's critics have continued to demand that effective POW status be granted to captured terrorists or that they be treated like ordinary criminal defendants, entitled to a speedy trial before a civilian court. The critics have also inaccurately accused the United States of "torture." This claim is based on the use of "stress" methods of interrogation, such as isolation, exposure to noise, and standing for up to four hours. This is the genesis of the second accusation against Gonzales: that he commissioned a memorandum, dated August 1, 2002, deliberately defining down the concept of "torture."

This memo, which was prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), has become more controversial than Gonzales's own memo on the Geneva Conventions. Word on the Washington street is that the opinion was originally demanded by the CIA, which was concerned about its interrogators' facing unfounded criminal charges if coercive questioning methods were employed. The memo concludes that torture is unlawful, that any criminal prosecution would require proof of a specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering, and that the federal statute criminalizing torture cannot, consistent with constitutional separation-of-powers principles, be applied to the president's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants in wartime. This last point is clearly the memo's most controversial, and although the OLC offers solid legal arguments to support each of its conclusions, they can certainly be honestly debated.

Few of the critics, however, have chosen to wade through the memo's 50 single-spaced pages of text, dozens of citations, and 26 footnotes to contest the substance of the OLC's work. Rather, the Left has expressed outrage that the opinion was requested at all — as if asking what conduct is legally punishable as "torture" constitutes an endorsement of its use. Of course, the most pernicious — and baseless — accusation is that this memorandum, along with Gonzales's earlier position on the application of the Geneva Conventions, led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib by creating a "permissive climate." Although this charge is rebutted by the final report of the Schlesinger Commission (established to conduct an independent review of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and alleged abuses elsewhere), it remains an article of faith among the administration's opponents...


TOPICS: Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: gonzales; term2

1 posted on 01/04/2005 4:23:45 PM PST by swilhelm73
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To: swilhelm73

Leahy the Loser will lead with the attacks on Gonzales. His lantern burns late digging up dirt. What a despicable bastard.


2 posted on 01/04/2005 4:29:11 PM PST by afnamvet
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To: swilhelm73
Of course, the most pernicious — and baseless — accusation is that this memorandum, along with Gonzales's earlier position on the application of the Geneva Conventions, led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib by creating a "permissive climate."

If that's the flimsy basis for the Demo-Commies' line of argument, well, two can play that same game. There is substantially more evidence that the "permissive climate" engendered by Clinton administration policies led to the "abuses" of 9/11. Just throw that rhetorical flourish into their faces and watch them squirm and sputter...

3 posted on 01/04/2005 4:50:39 PM PST by The Electrician
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To: swilhelm73

I can't understand this. Why the left would waste political capital on this appointment is beyond me. They have nothing to win here.


4 posted on 01/04/2005 6:34:54 PM PST by Rudder
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To: swilhelm73

If I were on the Committee, every time the Dems displayed the Abu Graba$$ pictures I would continually ask "so which one is supposed to be Gonzales? Is he disguised as the girl?"


5 posted on 01/04/2005 6:39:24 PM PST by Hillarys Gate Cult (This space for rant)
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To: The Electrician

One of the great mistakes Bush made was to completely avoid talking about why our security services and military were in such disarray in the interest of forging a bipartisan WoT.

The bipartisanship lasted 6 months, and Bush giving a pass to Clinton and his administration has allowed the Left to escape the blame they so richly deserve.

Specifically, the Repubs should bring up the Gorelick memo again and again...


6 posted on 01/05/2005 3:49:47 PM PST by swilhelm73 (Like the archers of Agincourt, ... the Swiftboat Veterans took down their own haughty Frenchman.)
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To: swilhelm73

Maybe... But IMHO having Bush take the high road on that was the right political move (as well as the decent thing to do). To have spoken the truth about the Clinton policies and actions in the aftermath of 9/11 would have been taken as unconscionable politicking during a time of national crisis. Instead, he left it up to the Democrats to insinuate politics into the realm of national security, once again demonstrating why Democrats can not be trusted to be in charge of issues of such importance.


7 posted on 01/05/2005 4:35:00 PM PST by The Electrician
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To: swilhelm73

Gonzales hearings: Senate to confirm defender of torture as US attorney general
By Joseph Kay
7 January 2005

"The nomination of Alberto Gonzales for attorney general marks a significant escalation in the assault upon democratic rights in the United States. Perhaps more than any other figure, Gonzales is identified with the most criminal actions of the Bush administration. As White House counsel, he helped develop a pseudo-legal rationale for preemptive war, indefinite detention of detainees and, most infamously, torture."

"Gonzales’s nomination signals that the Bush administration is determined to expand the power of the presidency and intensify the assault on constitutional rights and international law."

Sounds like "liberal" Democrat party propaganda smear?

Nope: Source http://www.wsws.org (World Socialist Web Site)


8 posted on 01/07/2005 8:24:56 PM PST by purpleland (The price of freedom is vigilance.)
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To: purpleland

Didn't the wobblies endorse Kerry this time around?


9 posted on 01/10/2005 2:24:42 PM PST by swilhelm73 (Like the archers of Agincourt, ... the Swiftboat Veterans took down their own haughty Frenchman.)
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To: swilhelm73

Yep! With the very same Democrat party Mooreism mantra: "Take America Back" (implied save the U.S. from the Bush neoCom facists and the Rove Monster!!!)

The leftist faction controlling the Democrat party gets their perverse oppositional rhetoric from you-know-what HQ.


10 posted on 01/10/2005 3:25:08 PM PST by purpleland (The price of freedom is vigilance.)
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