Alberto Gonzales Lacks Respect for the Rule of Law (Feingold) [View All]

Thursday, 27 January 2005, 12:17 pm
Press Release: Senator Russ Feingold

'Alberto Gonzales Lacks Respect for the Rule of Law'
Wednesday 26 January 2005
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold at the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States.

<snip> As Judge Gonzales himself said as he stood next to the President on the day he was nominated: "The American people expect and deserve a Department of Justice guided by the rule of law." I am pained to say, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Gonzales' performance as White House Counsel and, particularly, his appearance before this Committee and his responses to our questions, have given me grave doubts about whether he meets that test. Judge Gonzales too often has seen the law as an obstacle to be dodged or cleared away in furtherance of the President's policies. <snip>

Time after time, Judge Gonzales has been a key participant in developing secret legal theories to justify policies that, as they have become public, have tarnished our nation's international reputation and made it harder, not easier, for us to prevail in this struggle. He requested and then disseminated the infamous Office of Legal Counsel ("OLC") memo that for almost two years, until it was revealed and discredited, made it the position of the government of the United States of America that the International Convention Against Torture, and statutes implementing that treaty, prohibit only causing physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Under that standard, the images from Abu Ghraib that revolted the entire world would not be considered torture, nor, according to some, would the shocking interrogation technique called "waterboarding."

Judge Gonzales advised the President that he could declare the entire legal regime of the Geneva Conventions inapplicable to the conflict in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Powell rightly pointed out the danger of this course, but Judge Gonzales persisted. This theory could actually have given greater legal protection to terrorists, by taking away a key part of the legal regime under which war crimes can be prosecuted. The idea that the Geneva Conventions protect terrorists who commit war crimes, which Judge Gonzales repeated in his hearing, is a dramatic misunderstanding of the law, and it was very troubling to hear it from the person who would coordinate our legal strategy in the war on terrorism.

Judge Gonzales was also an architect of the Administration's position on the legal status of those it called "enemy combatants," a position that was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States last year. <snip>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0501/S00296.htm