According to the AP just now, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has been selected by Bush to replace John Ashcroft as Bush’s second Attorney General. If so, his confirmation hearings will be a reminder to many of what the Bush Administration did wrong in allowing Abu Ghraib to happen. Why?
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales issued two memos Tuesday directing staff members to preserve all materials such as e-mails and phone logs that might be related to the leak. (Gonzales' first memo)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/30/leak.memo.ap/index.html
The second memo specifically mentioned records related to Wilson and his wife, as well as to any contacts with Novak and two members of Newsday's Washington bureau, Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps, who reported in the Long Island, New York, newspaper July 22 that an intelligence official had confirmed Plame's position at the CIA. (Gonzales' second memo)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/30/cia.leak.whmemo2/
Call for special counsel
Democrats stepped up calls Tuesday for a special counsel to investigate the leak. (Full story)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/30/cia.leak.politics/index.html
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and others said the accusation that the leak may have come from senior administration officials created a conflict of interest with the Bush-appointed attorney general and his staff.
"If you look at the chain of command, it goes right up to the attorney general," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. "And the attorney general is a close political ally of the president."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Republican of Texas, scoffed at the Democrats' call for an independent counsel, saying the idea "must be in [Democrats'] political handbook."
Justice Department officials would not comment on whether a special counsel had been ruled out, but one senior official said, "No door has been closed."
CNN's Dana Bash, David Ensor and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/30/wilson.cia/
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White House Won't Release Gonzales Papers
By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1153/1-6-2005/20050106064508_05.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House refused Thursday to provide senators additional documents on attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales' involvement in the decision to allow aggressive interrogations of terrorism detainees, setting up a confrontation with Democrats looking into his role in the now-repudiated policies.
Gonzales, who served as President Bush's White House counsel, is pledging to abide by treaties that ban torture of prisoners, if he is confirmed by the Senate as the first Hispanic attorney general. He will answer questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about his role in Bush's 2002 decision that the president had the authority to bypass international anti-torture accords.
Senate Democrats say the White House has refused to give them all of the memos and documents they need to trace how that decision was made so they can review Gonzales' role and how it would affect him as the nation's top law enforcement official.
But David Leitch, the White House's deputy counsel, told ranking Judiciary Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont in a letter released Thursday that the administration has already turned over all of the documents it plans to.
2005-01-06 14:25:30 GMT
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Gonzales - Enron - Bush - Taliban - John O'Neill Connections
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/GONZALES.HTM
Attorney General Pinochet
by Prof Francis A. Boyle
November 11, 2004
As White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales originated, authorized, approved, and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which are serious war crimes. In other words, Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act. For example, article 129 of the Third Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War provides in relevant part with respect to presumptive U.S. war criminals such as Gonzales: "Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such graves breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts." To the same effect is article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting Civilians in wartime. This obligation to prosecute Gonzales applies to every High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions, which means every state in the world. And there is no statute of limitations for the commission of such serious war crimes. The same conclusions can be reached by the application of U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare, which, by its own terms, also applies to civil Beyond The Roots Of Abu Ghraib lian government officials involved in ordering or participating in the commission of war crimes. In any event, the U.S. Senate must reject his nomination. As a presumptive war criminal, Gonzales is not fit to be Attorney General of the United States of America. Should Gonzales travel around the world in that capacity, human rights lawyers such as myself will attempt to get him prosecuted wherever he might go along the lines of what happened to General Pinochet in London. Like pirates, war criminals are hostes humani generis--the enemies of all humankind.
[Francis A. Boyle is a Professor of International Law and the author of "Destroying World Order" (Clarity Press: 2004)]
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You tell me. Perhaps she's just coming back from a Slayer concert. She is pointing down with her other hand...to the lair of her Dark Master?
http://truthout.org/fyi/
A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSANDS WORDS!
