Senate Dems turn Alberto Gonzalez into a piñata
The Wall Street Journal opened its Thursday, January 6th editorial this way:
The White House appears to be dreading today's confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales now that Democrats seem ready to blame the Attorney General nominee for Abu Ghraib and other detainee mistreatment.
As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, "STOP THE TAPE!" Just that one sentence has me scratching divots in my head.
1) They had to know that when they tapped Judge Gonzalez to replace John Ashcroft, the Democrats were going to resurrect the Abu Ghraib flap; if they were "dreading" it, why did they pick him?
2) They had also to know that what they were "dreading" wasn't endemic to Judge Gonzalez. The Dems on the Judiciary Committee were going to pummel whomever the President selected, just on general principles. Condolezza Rice won't be any different, nor will anybody else that Bush sends up to the Hill for confirmation hearings.
3) Why were they "dreading" a gambit that is so completely full of holes and enjoys little support from the American public at large?
The bottom line facts are these: Judge Gonzalez, in his capacity as White House counsel, never wrote a memo "authorizing torture." What he did do was ask the Justice Department to determine if captured terrorist fighters were or were not covered by the Geneva Convention, which, in the former instance, would effectively negate what we could do to extract information from them. DOJ came back with the entirely reasonable and common-sensical stance that the GC does not apply to "illegal combatants," and that therefore, the military and CIA had greater latitude in interrogating al Qaeda "detainees."
Yet the Bush Administration made it clear that they were to be treated "humanely," just as it also made clear that the GC would apply to the Iraqi theater of operations. By no stretch of the imagination, much less logic, therefore, can the aforementioned memo be said to have led to the fraternity hazing that took place at Abu Ghraib, much less an "atmosphere for torture." And, also in point of fact, the Army was investigating those prison abuses six months before Big Media scandalmongered them, and those responsible are all headed for long stretches in the stockade.
The above is the background for the WSJ editorial's next passage:
[T]his is actually a great chance for the Administration to do itself, and the cause of fighting terror, some good by forcefully repudiating all the glib and dangerous abuse of the word "torture." For what's at stake in this controversy is nothing less than the ability of U.S. forces to interrogate enemies who want to murder innocent civilians. And the Democratic position, Mr. Gonzales shouldn't be afraid to say, amounts to a form of unilateral disarmament that is likely to do far more harm to civil liberties than anything even imagined so far.
As much as this is a war of annihilation, it is also a war of information. If we are to carry out the President's repeatedly emphasized strategy of eliminating threats and plots before they can be launched against us, intelligence gathering is absolutely critical. And yet there on that committee sit Democrats who don't want to acknowledge that we're at war, indeed are far more fretful over the "rights" of our Islamist enemies than they are of protecting the American homeland from devastation and ruin.
Or, rather, there on that committee sit Democrats whose top, overriding priority remains fighting their own separate war against George W. Bush, to which everything else, including the defense of the country, is subordinated.
The Gonzalez hearings are, in other words, not something to be "dreaded," but an opportunity to be embraced. But doing so would require the Bush White House to be bold about asserting the illegality of our enemies, the inapplicability of the GC, the need for more aggressive forms of interrogation, and the idiotic partisan irresponsibility of the disloyal opposition in twisting and distorting the definition of torture to include damn near anything outside the bounds of the GC. And the fact is that the Bushies quickly and cravenly retreated on this issue almost as soon as the Abu Ghraib story broke late last spring, which puts them in a profoundly disadvantageous position now to either return to a more robust interrogation policy or defend such in these hearings.
This, of course, is why retreating in politics is never a good idea. Besides which, you can take it to the bank that the same Dem-agogues who are smearing Judge Gonzalez and the Administration he serves as "torturers" now will be blasting them mercilessly for failing to prevent another 9/11 or worse attack, the same way that they did during the public 9/11 commission circus last spring.
Moreover, as the Journal op-ed observes, it could lead to what libs say they least want to see:
Do [Democrats] really think Roosevelt's internment camps and Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus were merely products of a less enlightened age, and that Americans wouldn't respond to a dirty bomb explosion in a major city with mass detentions of men with Islamic surnames, closed borders, or worse? This civil-liberties catastrophe is precisely what "water-boarding" is trying to prevent.
That's meant as a rhetorical question, but it actually has a serious answer. Of course Democrats aren't thinking about that. They're not "thinking" at all. They're simply doing the bidding of the Michael Moore extreme left wing that dominates their party's grassroots, and that means fiercely and viciously resisting the Bush White House at every turn, even if it is futile, even if it is counter-productive, even if it is politically suicidal. And frankly, to put themselves in the position of defending the enemy against their own government is, to put it mildly, not the best PR stance for prominent Donks to be taking.
Can they keep Judge Gonzalez' nomination from being sent to the Senate floor? Probably not, since Chairman Specter not only doesn't appear to be opposing it, but asked an insightful question of some Dem witnesses employing the "ticking nuke" hypothetical (for which none of the three had any substantive answer beyond "humina-humina-humina..."). Can they sustain a filibuster? Again, probably not, since too many Dems have indicated their willingness to at least not expend that kind of ammo on a nominee that, given his political moderation, they can pretty easily live with.
That is all the more reason for the Bushies and their Senate allies to punish the Dems for their rabid, reactionary pacifism. But first they'll have to throw off the mild case of it from which they themselves are suffering.
The White House appears to be dreading today's confirmation hearings for Alberto Gonzales now that Democrats seem ready to blame the Attorney General nominee for Abu Ghraib and other detainee mistreatment.
As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, "STOP THE TAPE!" Just that one sentence has me scratching divots in my head.
1) They had to know that when they tapped Judge Gonzalez to replace John Ashcroft, the Democrats were going to resurrect the Abu Ghraib flap; if they were "dreading" it, why did they pick him?
2) They had also to know that what they were "dreading" wasn't endemic to Judge Gonzalez. The Dems on the Judiciary Committee were going to pummel whomever the President selected, just on general principles. Condolezza Rice won't be any different, nor will anybody else that Bush sends up to the Hill for confirmation hearings.
3) Why were they "dreading" a gambit that is so completely full of holes and enjoys little support from the American public at large?
The bottom line facts are these: Judge Gonzalez, in his capacity as White House counsel, never wrote a memo "authorizing torture." What he did do was ask the Justice Department to determine if captured terrorist fighters were or were not covered by the Geneva Convention, which, in the former instance, would effectively negate what we could do to extract information from them. DOJ came back with the entirely reasonable and common-sensical stance that the GC does not apply to "illegal combatants," and that therefore, the military and CIA had greater latitude in interrogating al Qaeda "detainees."
Yet the Bush Administration made it clear that they were to be treated "humanely," just as it also made clear that the GC would apply to the Iraqi theater of operations. By no stretch of the imagination, much less logic, therefore, can the aforementioned memo be said to have led to the fraternity hazing that took place at Abu Ghraib, much less an "atmosphere for torture." And, also in point of fact, the Army was investigating those prison abuses six months before Big Media scandalmongered them, and those responsible are all headed for long stretches in the stockade.
The above is the background for the WSJ editorial's next passage:
[T]his is actually a great chance for the Administration to do itself, and the cause of fighting terror, some good by forcefully repudiating all the glib and dangerous abuse of the word "torture." For what's at stake in this controversy is nothing less than the ability of U.S. forces to interrogate enemies who want to murder innocent civilians. And the Democratic position, Mr. Gonzales shouldn't be afraid to say, amounts to a form of unilateral disarmament that is likely to do far more harm to civil liberties than anything even imagined so far.
As much as this is a war of annihilation, it is also a war of information. If we are to carry out the President's repeatedly emphasized strategy of eliminating threats and plots before they can be launched against us, intelligence gathering is absolutely critical. And yet there on that committee sit Democrats who don't want to acknowledge that we're at war, indeed are far more fretful over the "rights" of our Islamist enemies than they are of protecting the American homeland from devastation and ruin.
Or, rather, there on that committee sit Democrats whose top, overriding priority remains fighting their own separate war against George W. Bush, to which everything else, including the defense of the country, is subordinated.
The Gonzalez hearings are, in other words, not something to be "dreaded," but an opportunity to be embraced. But doing so would require the Bush White House to be bold about asserting the illegality of our enemies, the inapplicability of the GC, the need for more aggressive forms of interrogation, and the idiotic partisan irresponsibility of the disloyal opposition in twisting and distorting the definition of torture to include damn near anything outside the bounds of the GC. And the fact is that the Bushies quickly and cravenly retreated on this issue almost as soon as the Abu Ghraib story broke late last spring, which puts them in a profoundly disadvantageous position now to either return to a more robust interrogation policy or defend such in these hearings.
This, of course, is why retreating in politics is never a good idea. Besides which, you can take it to the bank that the same Dem-agogues who are smearing Judge Gonzalez and the Administration he serves as "torturers" now will be blasting them mercilessly for failing to prevent another 9/11 or worse attack, the same way that they did during the public 9/11 commission circus last spring.
Moreover, as the Journal op-ed observes, it could lead to what libs say they least want to see:
Do [Democrats] really think Roosevelt's internment camps and Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus were merely products of a less enlightened age, and that Americans wouldn't respond to a dirty bomb explosion in a major city with mass detentions of men with Islamic surnames, closed borders, or worse? This civil-liberties catastrophe is precisely what "water-boarding" is trying to prevent.
That's meant as a rhetorical question, but it actually has a serious answer. Of course Democrats aren't thinking about that. They're not "thinking" at all. They're simply doing the bidding of the Michael Moore extreme left wing that dominates their party's grassroots, and that means fiercely and viciously resisting the Bush White House at every turn, even if it is futile, even if it is counter-productive, even if it is politically suicidal. And frankly, to put themselves in the position of defending the enemy against their own government is, to put it mildly, not the best PR stance for prominent Donks to be taking.
Can they keep Judge Gonzalez' nomination from being sent to the Senate floor? Probably not, since Chairman Specter not only doesn't appear to be opposing it, but asked an insightful question of some Dem witnesses employing the "ticking nuke" hypothetical (for which none of the three had any substantive answer beyond "humina-humina-humina..."). Can they sustain a filibuster? Again, probably not, since too many Dems have indicated their willingness to at least not expend that kind of ammo on a nominee that, given his political moderation, they can pretty easily live with.
That is all the more reason for the Bushies and their Senate allies to punish the Dems for their rabid, reactionary pacifism. But first they'll have to throw off the mild case of it from which they themselves are suffering.
posted by JASmius at 10:45 PM
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