Why The USA Must Reject Bush's Evil "Marquis de Sade" Nominee For Attorney General: Alberto Gonzales, who Wrote "Torture Memo" That Laid Groundwork For Abu Ghraib
by Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." -Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
There was a bipartisan consensus on last Sunday's televised political talk-shows that the US Senate will confirm, with relative ease, Mr. Bush's appointment of Alberto R. Gonzales as the next Attorney General ("AG"). However, if our Senators retain any respect for universal human rights and the rule of constitutional and international law, they will vigorously oppose Mr. Gonzales' appointment as our new AG. [1] [2] Furthermore, it's imperative that our Senators, both left and right, defeat this unwise appointment for the following five reasons.
1. Mr. Gonzales Knew, Or Should Have Known, That He Was Dispensing Disastrously False Legal Advice. While functioning as Mr. Bush's White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales wrote his infamous "torture memo" in August of 2002, entitled "Standards Of conduct For Interrogations Under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A." In that legally-meritless 50-page opinion, Mr. Gonzales:
(A) falsely argued that the US government's interrogators would be legally justified in torturing -- even unto death -- war prisoners who were captured in the USA's so-called "war on terror"; and
(B) falsely advised President Bush that his subfunction as commander-in-chief somehow magically empowered him with the authority to (i) override the US Constitution and the federal War Crimes Act, (ii) ignore the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention On Torture, (iii) flout international human-rights law, and (iv) therefore authorize those acts of torture. "Taking his cue from the Nazis' 'f
