- President Bush wants the lawyer who advised him that
international rules on the treatment of prisoners were obsolete and "quaint"
to become the principal law officer of the United States of America. Alberto
Gonzales, long-time Bush insider and currently chief legal counsel to the
president, has been given a mildly rough ride by Democrats at his Senate
confirmation hearing, though his ratification has never been in doubt because
of the Republican domination of Congress.
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- Thanks to documents that came to light during the investigation
into the Abu Ghraib abuses, it is clear that Gonzales played a key role
in formulating the argument that the provisions of the Geneva Convention
had no inviolability if it was the United States that violated them.
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- It cannot be a coincidence that this recasting of the
legal view of the US toward torture and mistreatment of captives preceded
widespread abuses, the best known of which have been at Abu Ghraib and
the sinister deprivation practiced on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, in what
the administration hoped would be the jurisdictional limbo of an offshore
US military base.
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- By promoting the man who undoubtedly told him what he
wanted to hear, President Bush has made it clear that nothing has changed
in his definition of the "rule of law" which he invokes whenever
he holds forth on his grand vision for the world under American tutelage.
He clearly sees his hard-hitting and uncompromising approach to the challenges
of our time and the complex problems of the Middle East as gritty and gutsy.
In his first term, only one member of his inner Cabinet, Secretary of State
Colin Powell was not on the same neoconservative wavelength. With Powell's
replacement by Condoleezza Rice, there is now no one within the White House
who will test the administration's policies for their ultimate effectiveness
and impact in the Middle East.
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- For America's friends this is a deeply disturbing state
of affairs. Every move that might enhance international confidence in its
policies seems to be matched by a countermove designed to destroy that
faith. Thus the United States military is in South Asia in a massive effort
to assist the people of Aceh who bore the brunt of the tsunami's devastation.
This would seem to provide compelling proof that Washington is not pursuing
an anti-Muslim agenda and ought to calm fears in the Islamic world that
it is. Yet at the very same time, Bush has chosen a man whose legal advice
has led, whether he meant it or not, to the widespread abuse of prisoners,
the majority of whom are Muslims.
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- We are due to get even more of the same gung-ho, uncompromising
power politics which leave moderates in the dust and play into the hands
of extremists in both the neoconservative and Muslim extremist worlds.
Ronald Reagan used to be described as the cowboy president who shot first
and asked question afterward. But at least he asked those questions. The
Bush administration thinks it already knows the answers and seems likely
to just keep on shooting.
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- Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
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- http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=57254&d=8&m=1&y=2005
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