Wed Nov 10th, 2004 at 12:21:39 PST
Bush can't appoint a moderate to save his life, so we've got to get the Kos machine back in gear and out of its post-election malaise.
LTEs, message boards, emails, word of mouth - let the world know why we can't have Gonzales be the top law enforcement official in the country.
Borrowing from Kos and other blogs to consolidate everything in one place:
- Gonzales was largely responsible for the chain of events that led to Abu Ghraib - actually writing a memo to Bush advocating the disregard of Geneva Convention torture rules.
- Gonzeles was the legal architect for the Gitmo detainee system, much of which various courts (including the Supreme Court) have ruled unconstitutional.
- Gonzales had a tight financial and political connection to Enron, making him unable to impartially handle the largest corporate fraud in modern history or to enforce the laws needed to prevent the next Enron-like scandal.
Details after the jump...
Diaries :: VirginiaDem's diary ::
1. Albert Gonzales is currently White House General Counsel. While there, he "asked for" and received a memorandum regarding the "Status of Taliban Forces ... Under the Geneva Conventions." The memo concludes that the Taliban forces are not covered under the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners of war from torture. Gonzales let his feelings be known in a January 25, 2002 memo to the President, writing:
In my judgment, this new paradigm [the war on terror] renders obsolete Geneva's [i.e., the Geneva Convention's] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.
Gonzales's pro-torture memo gave fruit to an Order by the President accepting this rationale, making it part of what what Newsweek called the "root of torture" that led to the Abu Ghraib debacle.
2. Also while at the White House, Gonzales was the author of the Gitmo detainment procedures:
[H]e drew up the rules for holding suspected terrorists at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detainees have been designated enemy combatants, denied prisoner-of-war status under the international Geneva Convention.
These rules have repeatedly been rejected by federal courts as unconstitutional, including the Supreme Court last summer.
3. Gonzales is "inextricably tied" to Enron, casting doubt on his ability to impartially handle the biggest corporate fraud in history. As the described in the press even now:
Gonzales also has connections to scandal-ridden energy giant Enron. He is a former partner in the Houston law firm Vinson and Elkins, which represented Enron. He also received $6,500 in campaign contributions from the company when he ran for re-election to the Texas Supreme Court.
Indeed, Gonzales got rich off of Enron as a corporate partner at Vinson & Elkins, which is the law firm that was sued for crafting these deals,
Remember, the federal government's case against Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling is still ongoing. Gonzales owes his fortune and much of his early political future to Ken Lay, so making him the nation's top law enforcement officer while the federal government prosecutes Lay presents an obvious conflict of interest. Also, we cannot trust the investigation and enforcement of rules against the future "Enrons" to a corporate lawyer who was possibly contributed to the Enron debacle in the first place.