“Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider,” – CNN.com. Says it all today, doesn’t it?
GONZALES’ ANSWERS: Marty Lederman goes through the fine print of the Senate responses from the nominee to run the Justice Department. Plenty of reason to delay the vote on his confirmation. Money quote:
The responses confirm what has been manifest for a while now: The Administration has concluded that the CIA, when it interrogates suspected Al Qaeda detainees overseas, may lawfully engage in “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment–i.e., treatment that would “shock the conscience,” and thus be unconstitutional, within the United States–as long as that treatment does not constitute “torture” under the very narrow meaning of that term in the federal criminal law.
Translation: America is now a torturing nation, under any reasonable definition of the word “torture”. This is president Bush’s achievement. When Gonazales was given an opportunity to disown such practices as “forced enemas, infliction of cigarette burns, and binding detainees hand and foot and leaving them in urine and feces for 18-24 hours,” he replied that it was not appropriate for him to “attempt to analyze” the legality of such techniques. We want this guy for AG? Lederman also notes how the administration, despite saying that the war in Iraq falls under the Geneva Conventions, nevertheless exempts insurgents from the protections. How conveeenient. So it’s open season for any suspected insurgent in U.S. custody in Iraq. (And the word “suspected” is apposite here. The dozens of inmates abused at Abu Ghraib were part of a random intake that was up to 90 percent innocent.) Abu Ghraib begins to make more sense, doesn’t it, as does the pattern of abusive behavior by scattered U.S. (and now British) troops across the areas of combat. Then there’s this:
Moreover, Gonzales suggests that the Fourth Geneva Convention, with its protection of civilians, no longer applies to civilians detained by the U.S. now that the U.S. is no longer an occupying power.
Wow. Once sovereignty was transferred, we’re no longer at war and therefore no longer formally bound by Geneva. I can’t imagine how stressed out soldiers might feel they’ve been told they can treat Iraqi civilians however they want. Given these responses, a vote for Gonzales is to my mind very hard to defend. What he didn’t say was legion; what he did say was chilling.
The Dish 