Breaking news: Bush plans to name White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales as his next Attorney General. Gonzales was one of the key players in preparing memos advising the president that flushing the Geneva Conventions down the toilet would be perfectly acceptable. Those memos are pivotal in the chain of events that led to the torture of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
Is anyone still expecting a more moderate George Bush in his second term?
Update:
Via Daily Kos, here's a little speculation on possible fallout from this by Steve Soto at The Left Coaster.
You can also be sure that hooking Gonzales up as AG in a second term to serve alongside Rummy will be the final straw in pushing Colin Powell out the door. Given how shocked various GOP senators were in seeing what transpired at Abu Ghraib, and knowing how upset even John Warner is at being stonewalled by the Pentagon and the White House over his requests for information on Abu Ghraib, it's easy to see how the Democrats can form alliances with GOP moderates to strongly fight any Gonzales nomination to the highest law enforcement post in the land.If John Warner and Lindsey Graham are that concerned about the Abu Ghraib debacle, and if John McCain shares Colin Powell's revulsion at the trashing of the Geneva Convention protocols and what it means for American POWs from here on out, how can any of these three vote for the architect of that legal doctrine to be our AG?
So Abu Ghraib may end up front and centre at the confirmation hearings and moderate Republicans may have to re-evaluate their all-or-nothing loyalty to Bush's agenda.
Works for me.
See, I knew Bush could come up with somebody who would make us miss John Ashcroft.
Here's another frightening scenario to contemplate: what are the odds of Bush proposing John Ashcroft for the Supreme Court when the next vacancy opens up?
cee:
See the post immediately before this one.
Bah, that's nothing. Michael Ledeen is pushing for Zell Miller as Secretary of State, Jim Woolsey for SecDef, and Wolfowitz for National Security Advisor.
Seriously.
I saw that. I thought about blogging it but I didn't want anyone's head to explode before they'd digested the news about Gonzales.
Has anyone seen a reaction to the Gonzales nomination from the American Bar Association?
I vaguely recall that there was some movement within the ABA to censure the administration lawyers, Gonzales first among them, who produced the infamous memos.
World reaction is going to be interesting too: this is a man who considers the Geneva Conventions "quaint."
I haven't heard of any feedback from the ABA. But I can tell you the ACLU's reaction. In the spirit of non-partisanship they're taking no "official" position but have this to say:
"The board, staff and more than 400,000 members of the ACLU do call, however, for a full and thorough Senate confirmation process that scrutinizes Mr. Gonzales' positions on key civil liberties and human rights issues. Particular attention should be devoted to exploring Mr. Gonzales' proposed policies on the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, the Guantanamo Bay detentions, the designation of United States citizens as enemy combatants and reproductive rights.
Mr. Gonzales should be queried, moreover, on his January 25, 2002 memo, authored in his capacity as White House counsel, which described certain legal protections guaranteed in the Geneva Conventions to persons captured during military hostilities as "obsolete" and "quaint." His confirmation hearings should also examine in detail Mr. Gonzales? approval of the now-disavowed Justice Department memoranda that condoned the torture and incommunicado and indefinite detention of detainees captured during the Afghanistan conflict."
So Abu Ghraib may end up front and centre at the confirmation hearings and moderate Republicans may have to re-evaluate their all-or-nothing loyalty to Bush's agenda.
I'm still hopeful for the former, but the latter? Ain't gonna happen. Whatever 'moderate' Republicans are left in the GOP had their chance to re-evaluate when the Abu Ghraib story first broke, and they kept quiet. If someone like John McCain hasn't re-thought his support for Bush after seeing him sanction torture and trash veterans, he's hopeless.