As far as civil liberties in the US are concerned the worst is yet to come. Sharif Abdel-Kouddous, in New York, reports on the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as US attorney general When John Ashcroft announced his resignation shortly after President Bush's reelection in November, it marked the departure of what the head of the American Civil Liberties Union once called "one of the worst attorney generals in American history." But while Ashcroft shepherded the draconian United States Patriot Act through Congress and oversaw the detention of thousands of Arabs and Muslims after 11 September, that distinction may soon be usurped by the man Bush nominated to replace him: Alberto Gonzales. As White House counsel, Gonzales helped pave the legal groundwork that led to the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the effect of which is indelible: Horrific images of Iraqis with bags over their heads, beaten, set upon by dogs and forced into sexually humiliating acts. The enduring photograph of a prisoner cloaked in black, standing on a box with wires attached to his outstretched arms. The orange-clad detainees in Cuba, languishing in a legal limbo. Mock executions, sensory depravation, prolonged isolation, suicides and death. While US officials continue to try and depict the abuse of detainees as the isolated work of a number of low-ranking soldiers acting on their own, reports in the press combined with thousands of pages released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act paint a very different picture. It is now evident that the US torture of prisoners involved multiple government branches in Afghanistan, Cuba and Iraq, beginning as early as 2002 and continuing well after US Congress and the military had begun investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal. Such widespread and systematic abuse inevitably leads one to look for a decree from the ranks above and Alberto Gonzales is at the center of the firestorm. In a January 2002 memo, Gonzales wrote that the so-called war on terror "renders obsolete [the Geneva Convention's] strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." A month later, US President George W Bush signed an order declaring he has the authority to circumvent the Geneva accords and reserves the right to do so "in this or future conflicts." In August 2002, a Justice Department memo sought by Gonzales outlined how to avoid violating US and international terror statutes while interrogating prisoners. The now infamous 'torture memo' contended the president has "commander-in- chief authority" to order torture and proposed potential legal defenses for US officials who may be accused of torture. The memo also provided a very narrow definition of torture, arguing that only physical abuse "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure," and mental abuse that caused "lasting psychological harm" amounted to torture. Despite repeated requests, the White House refused to provide copies of the memos to the Senate Judiciary Committee which held confirmation hearings on Gonzales' nomination to attorney-general last week in Washington. While Senate Democrats grilled Gonzales on his role in setting the stage for torture, perhaps the most interesting exchange of the day came from Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina and a former Judge Advocate in the Air Force Reserve. Graham said the August 2002 memo "put [U.S.] troops in jeopardy" by stripping away any likelihood that US prisoners will be treated in accordance with international law if captured. Graham added that "when you start looking at torture statutes and you look at ways around the spirit of the law, that you're losing the moral high ground." Graham -- himself a former military lawyer -- echoes a more widely held view within the military that stands opposed to the sanctioning of detainee abuse. Secretary of State Colin Powell objected strongly to the January 2002 memo the day after it was issued. Powell argued that declaring the conventions inapplicable would "reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general." A week before the Senate confirmation hearings, a dozen retired generals and admirals -- including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili -- released a letter to the Judiciary Committee noting that Gonzales' role in shaping US detention and interrogation operations "fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world." Gonzales' nomination was also opposed by several civil rights groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, People for the American Way and Human Rights First. He has even been criticized by some conservatives who have been sceptical of his more moderate views on social issues such as abortion and affirmative action. Given the public outcry, Bush's decision to nominate Gonzales to attorney general may seem surprising, but his inspiring personal story is one aspect that has been lauded by critics and supporters alike. Gonzales was born the son of low-income migrant workers, one of seven siblings living in a two-bedroom house with no hot water and phone. He joined the Air Force to put himself through college and finished with a Harvard law degree. He eventually rose through Texas politics to become Bush's White House counsel. In fact, Bush has appointed Gonzales, 49, to his last five jobs. In 1995, then-Texas governor Bush named Gonzales to be his gubernatorial counsel. In 1997, Bush made him Texas Secretary of State and the following year he appointed Gonzales to his first judicial post - a seat on the Texas Supreme Court. During his days as Bush's gubernatorial counsel, one of Gonzales' most important jobs was to brief the governor on each execution in the state. And in Texas -- there were a lot -- 157 in Bush's six years as governor. Gonzales wrote an 'execution summary' for the first 57 of those cases. Those memos were obtained by writer Alan Berlow, who wrote about them extensively in The Atlantic Monthly in the summer of 2003. According to Berlow, Gonzales, "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." Berlow writes that the memos reflect "an extraordinarily narrow notion of clemency." They appear to have excluded, for instance, factors such as "mental illness or incompetence, childhood physical or sexual abuse, remorse, rehabilitation, racial discrimination in jury selection, the competence of the legal defense, or disparities in sentences between co-defendants or among defendants convicted of similar crimes." Gonzales is widely expected to be confirmed by the Senate later this month and go on to become the next Attorney General of the United States. And so the man who finds portions of the Geneva conventions obsolete and seeks a virtual blank check to use torture, the man who condones secret trials and does not grant mercy in execution will soon become the highest lawyer in the land.
