Juan Cole: Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons

[Briar]

After a day of hearing BBC etc reports which tend to studiously ignore this aspect of the criminal activities of Gonzales and the monsters he serves (after all, the UK is implicated in the same crimes. Discretion is all amongst journalists hoping to build successful careers, so they won't defend "wimpy, bleeding-heart liberal" scruples - in the name of objectivity and avoidance of bias, of course. The BBC, by the way, has no interest in saving the planet either), I was delighted to read this:

Juan Cole: Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons

The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution's own prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" (such a wimpy bleeding-heart liberal document). It is an index of the corruption of the Republican Party, which then controlled Congress, that they made this man attorney general in the first place.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales was hounded out of office not because he authorized torture and assaulted the basic principles of the US constitution, but because he fired US attorneys who wanted to investigate both Republican and Democratic voter fraud. Torture people all you like, is the message he sent, but if you're even-handed as between Republicans and Democrats, you are fired.

He tossed aside the Geneva Conventions, which were crafted to prevent any reemergence of Nazism in the post-war period. While Gonzales is not a Nazi, if you get rid of an anti-Nazi legal instrument you are in effect aiding and abetting potential fascism.

...

http://www.juancole.com/

[cui bono]

1. While I agree with the sentiment of his piece

it's not entirely accurate in its depiction of the USA scandal as I understand it. Iglesias, for one, said he was being urged to follow through on investigations where he didn't see anything substantial. That's not the same as being even handed. They wanted him to pursue bogus accusations against Dems. That's corruption. And when he wouldn't do that they fired him. The way Cole describes it he leaves out the DoJ pursuing those bogus charges and makes it sound less devious and sinister.