Former Military Leaders
Challenge Gonzales Nomination (Update3)
Bloomberg
January 03, 2005
Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A dozen former military officers,
including retired Army General John Shalikashvili, are
challenging the nomination of White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales to be U.S. attorney general because he endorsed
detaining suspected terrorists without protections accorded
prisoners of war.
The officers want lawmakers to question Gonzales about his
2002 legal opinion that the Geneva Conventions for war prisoners
don't cover combatants captured in Afghanistan or al-Qaeda
operatives seized around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. Besides Shalikashvili, former chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group includes retired Brigadier
General James P. Cullen, who was chief judge of the U.S. Army's
Court of Criminal Appeals.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Jan. 6 on
Gonzales's nomination by President George W. Bush to succeed
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. Democrats led by Vermont
Senator Patrick Leahy say they will ask Gonzales to explain his
role in drafting policies that they say spawned the prisoner
abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the U.S.
Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"The kinds of things that Mr. Gonzales espouses are the very
sort of things that are the first step on a slippery slope that
compromises the rule of law in this country," retired Marine
General Joseph P. Hoar, former commander of the U.S. Central
Command, said in an interview.
Senate Confirmation
Gonzales's appointment is subject to confirmation by the
Republican-controlled Senate.
In his Jan. 25, 2002, draft memo to Bush, Gonzales, 49, said
the "new paradigm" of the war on terror "renders obsolete
Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and
renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that a captured
enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges" and other
amenities of prisoner-of-war camps.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said today, "We expect
those detainees to be treated humanely and in accordance with our
laws and treaty obligations."
Without ruling on the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Supreme
Court held last June that more than 500 prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay could go to federal court to challenge their
incarceration.
Photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the Abu
Ghraib prison outside Baghdad sparked worldwide outrage in April.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials told
Congress that prisoner abuse was largely limited to a small group
of soldiers.
Pattern of Assaults
Still, civil rights groups last month released FBI e-mails and
internal memos detailing a two-year pattern of assaults, use of
dogs during interrogations and threatened executions of prisoners
at Guantanamo. The FBI records were obtained by the American
Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit.
Former Justice Department official John Yoo, in an article
published Sunday in the San Jose Mercury News, defended Gonzales.
"Aggressive measures" adopted by the administration "are
necessary to protect America from another terrorist attack," said
Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at
Berkeley.
In a report released today, the ACLU said Gonzales's role in
advising Bush on prisoner detention "deserves the closest
scrutiny" by the Senate "particularly because of the nexus
between the creation of many of these policies and the abuse
scandal at Abu Ghraib prison."
Religious Leaders
A group of 225 religious leaders plans a conference call with
reporters tomorrow to urge Gonzales to denounce the use of
torture under any circumstances. Hoar and Cullen are also
scheduled to speak in Washington tomorrow at a news conference
organized by Human Rights First.
In a letter to be sent to the Judiciary Committee, Hoar said
he, Cullen and others who are being asked to sign on will urge
the committee to question Gonzales closely about both the
detention and interrogation policies and the legal opinion by a
Justice Department lawyer that the president, as commander in
chief, wasn't bound by international law.
Cullen, now a partner at the New York law firm of Anderson,
Kill & Olick, said in an interview that Gonzales showed poor
judgment in writing the memo because it endorsed a proposal "to
depart from our obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which
he deemed quaint and perhaps obsolete."
Gonzales's attempt to place detention policies outside the
Geneva Conventions to avoid subjecting military personnel to
prosecution under the War Crimes Act is "unbecoming of the United
States" and anyone who would be attorney general, said retired
Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, former judge advocate general of the
Navy.
`Shortsighted' View
Hutson, now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord,
New Hampshire, said Gonzales's legal analysis "was shortsighted"
because "it didn't look over the horizon" to a time when U.S.
forces will want to rely on the protections of the Geneva
Conventions for its troops.
"This isn't the last war we are going to fight," Hutson said.
"Once you say the Geneva Conventions are quaint and obsolete, you
can't undo that."
Cullen said he is also concerned that Gonzales tried "to usher
through a redefinition of torture." An Aug. 1, 2002, Justice
Department memo to Gonzales stated that some mental and physical
pain during interrogation might not "rise to the level of
torture" under the U.S. military code.
"Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in
intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such
as organ failure, impairment or bodily function, or even death,"
said the memo, written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S.
Bybee.
A New Definition
A new Justice Department legal opinion made public last week
rescinds this definition of torture. The change "doesn't protect
Gonzalez. It indicts him," Hutson said.
Leahy said the department's latest opinion is welcome but
doesn't go far enough in repudiating the use of torture or making
it clear that Bush can't override laws against torture.
"The question is why it took two years to get to this point,"
Leahy said in a statement. "It also is no coincidence that this
turnaround has suddenly appeared on the eve" of the Gonzales
hearings, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Glenn Hall at ghall@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: January 3, 2005 18:36 EST
|