Partners in War Crimes
 

January 17 2005
Counterbias.com
Marc Krug

In demonstrating his flagrant disregard for the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human spirit, George Bush has had a willing partner for years.

When, as President, Bush needed legal justification for torturing combatants captured during the war on terror, he could find it in alinguistically convoluted 2002 memo. That memo was written by Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to President Bush.

And when, as governor of Texas, Bush needed legal justification fordenying commutation of a prisoner’s death sentence during the years 1994 through 1997, he could find it in another sort of memo. Those memos were also produced by Alberto Gonzales, then General Counsel to governor Bush.

Through his memos, Gonzales has exerted enormous power: he had a say in whether it was appropriate to torture people as well as whether it was appropriate to kill them. Unfortunately, he used this power for no better purpose than to give George Bush precisely what he wanted — justification to torture and to kill.

Atlantic author Alan Berlow, who has read the memos Gonzales produced when Bush was governor, said that many of them “were so slapdash, incomplete, and inaccurate that no one relying on them could possibly make a fair, balanced, and intelligent decision as to whether clemency should have been a consideration.”

Admittedly, Gonzales and his team of lawyers were then handling an unprecedented number of cases. Even so, in Berlow’s words: “Gonzales’ omissions appear less the oversights of an overworked attorney than the deliberate design of a lawyer who knew what his client [George Bush] wanted — an open and shut argument for execution — and was all too happy to deliver.”

Recently, several attorneys whose clients had been executed while Bush was governor saw these memos for the first time. Most criticized Gonzales for not providing fair and complete summaries of evidence and mitigating circumstances.

They also said that information, missing in these memos, might have influenced Bush in favor of their clients had he been aware of it.

Unfortunately, given Bush’s predisposition towards capital punishment, these attorneys appear to be engaging in wishful thinking. In short, they seem unable to correctly gauge either Bush’s or Gonzales’ commitment to justice — assuming either has any such commitment.

Regardless, Gonzales had succeeded: he had done whatever was necessary to please his boss, George Bush. As a reward, Gonzales was appointed Texas’ Secretary of State in late 1997.

That Gonzales’ desire to please contributed to the death of dozens did not seem to matter. Nor did it matter that his deliberately excluding exculpatory evidence and mitigating circumstances fed his boss’ aberrant desire to execute prisoners — regardless of whether they were mentally ill or challenged, or under the age of 18 when they committed the crime for which they paid with their lives.

Once Gonzales’ stream of 57 memos ended in late 1997, governor Bush persisted: this champion of moral virtue approved 95 more executions. In total, Bush chose to enforce the death penalty 152 times out of the 153 opportunities afforded him — a record unmatched by any other governor in modern history. During those years, Texas became a literal factory for executions, with as many as two a week and eight in a single month.

Because of this “heavy demand” and his famed reluctance to read anything, Bush rarely spent more than half an hour reviewing an execution briefing before recommending death. Further lessening the possibility of any lengthy reflection or investigation, Bush usually
received these briefings on the morning of the day the execution was scheduled to take place.

In an act of chilling hypocrisy and dubious veracity, Bush claimed that he acted as a “fail safe, [taking] one last review to make sure there is no doubt the individual is guilty and that he or she has had the due process guaranteed by our Constitution and laws.”

Somehow, we are to believe he accomplished all this in half an hour. But such are the words to be found in Bush’s autobiography, A Charge to Keep.

Replete with this false confidence, Bush has adamantly claimed over the years that no innocent man or woman was ever executed in Texas while he was governor. He makes this claim even though eight Texans have been released from death row in recent years — the latest on October 6, 2004. All of these innocent people would, no doubt, have been put to death had their execution briefings ever reached Bush’s desk when he was still governor.

By taking into consideration his propensity for imposing death sentences, it’s not hard to discern Bush’s true values. It would appear that the great moralizer is no believer in mercy and compassion — or in the possibility of redemption, even in a case where the Pope recommended clemency (for Tanya Faye Tucker).

The great moralizer also retains his long-held insensitivity to unwarranted and unjustified bloodshed and death. One need only look to Iraq for confirmation of this insensitivity.

And one need only remember that many of the prisoners captured in Iraq and Afghanistan were indeed tortured. Except, they allegedly were not tortured to the point where it became “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”

That sort of torture was forbidden, according to the famed 2002 “Bybee memo” — with which Gonzales will be forever connected since he was one of its primary champions. All other forms of physical and psychological torture, however, were evidently acceptable.

By supporting the belief that certain forms of torture were acceptable, Gonzales made his best attempt to follow the Bush party line. But if he was to succeed in this endeavor, Gonzales had to ignore objections from
the Department of State which disdained torture.

Instead, he had to do the bidding of the Department of Justice who wanted prisoners captured in the war against terror not to be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions and other similar laws concerning the fair treatment of prisoners. That Bush also supported this opinion should come as no surprise.

To solve this dilemma, Gonzales needed a justification. And what he came up with was singularly horrid: one whose speciousness was exceeded only by the tremendous damage it would eventually cause in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

"In my judgment, this new paradigm [the war on terror] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." Gonzales wrote these words in a legal memo to President Bush on Jan. 25, 2002.

By declaring prisoners captured in the war on terror exempt from the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales sought to reduce “the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act.” In this way, he hoped to
protect his boss from being prosecuted as a war criminal by subsequent American administrations.

To no one’s surprise, Gonzales had succeeded a second time: he had again done whatever was necessary to please his boss, George Bush. As a reward, he was nominated to be Attorney General in late 2004.
Unfortunately, unless most experts are wrong, Gonzales will soon be confirmed.

And once again, that Gonzales’ desire to please contributed to the torture and humiliation of dozens of prisoners — as well as, possibly, to the death of several — does not seem to matter. Nor does it matter
that his rendering the Geneva Conventions inapplicable likely enabled the indecencies of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to take place, and indelibly blackened the image of America in the world’s eye.

The horror of it all is that a man long impervious to the torture and death of others, Alberto Gonzales, will soon be America’s leading law enforcer. Unfortunately, this horror pales in comparison with that engendered by George Bush’s remaining the most powerful man in the
Western world.

In the two of them, we have that most dangerous combination: one forever with blood on his hands and the other forever washing it off.

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