Quaint-man update

Tomorrow is Alberto Gonzales' Senate confirmation hearing and so we provide you with a little curtain raising in the form of some choice excerpts from todays Times and Post. (By the way, is there anyone who can give a reasonable explanation as to why Chuck Shumer keeps saying, "I expect he'll be confirmed." I mean, it's most likely true, but does he have to keep saying it?)

From today's Times:

The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

From today's Times editorial:

As White House counsel, he recently oversaw the feckless vetting of Bernard Kerik as the nominee for secretary of homeland security. He was a primary agent behind unacceptably restrictive secrecy policies, the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the excessive authority to abuse civil liberties granted by the Patriot Act. In Texas, as Governor Bush's legal adviser, Mr. Gonzales wrote briefs on condemned prisoners' appeals for clemency that were notoriously sloppy.

Oh yes, and by the way, Gonzales picked a fight with Colin Powell, who argued that Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners be considered POWs, in a series of memos written in 2002.

Wait, there's more. From today's Washington Post:

White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales chaired the meetings on this issue, which included detailed descriptions of interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," a tactic intended to make detainees feel as if they are drowning. He raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war, approved an August 2002 memo that gave CIA interrogators the legal blessings they sought.

Gonzales, working closely with a small group of conservative legal officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Defense Department -- and overseeing deliberations that generally excluded potential dissenters -- helped chart other legal paths in the handling and imprisonment of suspected terrorists and the applicability of international conventions to U.S. military and law enforcement activities.

His former colleagues say that throughout this period, Gonzales -- a confidant of George W. Bush's from Texas and the president's nominee to be the next attorney general -- often repeated a phrase used by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to spur tougher anti-terrorism policies: "Are we being forward-leaning enough?"

Wow, not only did the guy loooove Bush but he parroted Rummy. How's that for nominee to be the nation's top-cop?

Oops, I almost forgot. Bush's nominee's legal findings were so flawed that they got smacked down last week by a new DOJ memo repudiating Gonzales' previous pro-torture memos.

The Justice Department has repudiated a 2002 legal opinion that authorized the use of torture, and it has issued a brief that returns U.S. policy closer to international standards. The Defense Department, in turn, has developed plans for new facilities and procedures at the Guantanamo Bay prison that will allow long-term detainees to be held in more humane conditions. Both steps are welcome. However, by themselves they are not sufficient to end the systematic violations of domestic and international human rights laws that the administration has committed since 2001.

The new torture opinion appeared just a week before tomorrow's scheduled opening of Senate hearings on President Bush's nomination of White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general. That's probably not a coincidence, since Mr. Gonzales was deeply involved in the legal review that led to the drafting of the original memo. Significantly, the new policy sets aside the earlier finding that Mr. Bush was empowered as commander in chief to override U.S. laws and international treaties prohibiting torture.

Over to you, Chuck Shumer...