Prospective attorney-general was 'behind Iraqi torture policy'

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Times
From Roland Watson in Washington



DEMOCRATS seeking to maximise the discomfort of President Bush’s would-be attorney-general received valuable ammunition yesterday.
Alberto Gonzales will be questioned by the Senate judiciary committee today about charges that, as Mr Bush’s chief White House counsel, he rode roughshod over legal conventions and paved the way for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Mr Gonzales, 49, was already facing an uncomfortable ride at today’s Capitol Hill confirmation hearing, but new details of his role in formulating the legal opinions that decreed that Mr Bush could ignore the Geneva Convention and that American interrogators could use torture techniques are bound to engender a bruising encounter.

The new accounts, in The Washington Post and The New York Times yesterday, suggest that Mr Gonzales may be vulnerable to the charge that he delivered legal opinions to suit Mr Bush’s aims in the war against terrorism. They also suggest that a driving force, possibly the critical force behind the controversial legal stances taken, was Dick Cheney’s counsel David Addington.

This is the first time that the Vice-President’s fingerprints have been detected anywhere near the mistreatment of prisoners.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1427670,00.html